Introduction: Status of Michigan Cities

Prepared for
Michigan Bipartisan Urban Caucus and the
Michigan Economic and Environmental Roundtable

Prepared by
Public Sector Consultants, Inc.

Funded by
A grant from the Frey Foundation

Download Full 53 Page Report

The well-being of Michigan’s central cities affects all state residents. Yet, there is no ongoing statistical compilation that provides policymakers and the public with an overview of the condition of Michigan’s cities. This report – which it is hoped will be improved and updated each year – is intended to be the first such overview.

The report is sponsored by the Michigan Economic and Environmental Roundtable for the Michigan House of Representatives Bipartisan Urban Caucus. The Frey Foundation provided funding.

At a recent news conference in Lansing, State Rep. Samuel Buzz Thomas III (D-Detroit) listens as State Rep. Bill Byl (R-Grand Rapids) summarizes the results of the first statistical report on the status of Michigan’s urban areas. Reps Thomas and Byl, co-chairs of the Michigan House Bipartisan Urban Caucus noted that this report marks the first time Michigan has taken a comprehensive look at the health of our state’s cities.

GOAL
The goal of this project is to inform state and local policymakers and their constituencies—Michigan citizens—about the well-being of Michigan cities. In particular, the report provides

• a statistical picture of the current conditions in our major urban areas;
• the basis on which these conditions may be tracked over time and important trends discerned;
• a discussion of the importance of these conditions in determining the relative well-being of cities; and
• a catalyst for engaging interested parties in discussing ways to improve the standard of living and quality of life in Michigan cities.

To our knowledge, nothing similar has been tried in the past. There are many useful reports that summarize one specific aspect of urban life (e.g., city government finances or the general health of a city’s population), but nothing that compiles and compares data on a multitude of factors. There also is research on conditions at the county, multi-county, and state level, but, in general, data at the city level rarely are available. Finally, there is a wealth of research based on the detailed statistics (in most cases down to the city block) collected every decade by the U.S. census, but it has limited use for this purpose because the data are not available frequently enough.

This report’s goal differs from that of past statistical reviews. It is hoped that this report will be updated annually, so the data used must be available each year, with the decennial census data used only as a benchmark. Furthermore, it is desirable to have as the unit of analysis the city proper. As mentioned, much of the publicly available economic and social data are presented only at the county or state level. Despite these data constraints, we believe we have collected and summarized a useful statistical overview of the current condition of Michigan’s cities.

METHODOLOGY
We began by selecting a representative list of 13 Michigan cities, using three criteria. First, we included four large cities: Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, and Lansing. Next, we picked two independent cities that are contiguous to large metropolitan areas: Wyoming and Warren. Finally, we chose seven cities to represent Michigan’s geographic diversity: Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Pontiac, Saginaw, and Traverse City.

• Large Cities
  Detroit
  Grand Rapids
  Flint
  Lansing
• Contiguous Cities
  Wyoming
  Warren
• Geographically Diverse Cities
  Ann Arbor
  Battle Creek
  Kalamazoo
  Muskegon
  Pontiac
  Saginaw
  Traverse City

Of course, these 13 cities comprise only a fraction of all Michigan municipalities. Although in 1996 only 21 percent of the state’s total population resided in these 13 cities, the hope is that by carefully choosing the cities for our sample, measuring their well-being will allow us to generalize to all urban areas in the state. In future reports, policymakers may wish to expand the number of cities.

After selecting the representative cities, we then determined the appropriate time period of analysis. To avoid misinterpretation, however, it is important to pick dates that correspond to roughly the same points in the economic cycle. For example, there was a vast change in the unemployment rate from 1992 (the last recession) to 1999 (a very good year for the overall economy); comparing these data is useful if we are analyzing the state’s progress during the current economic expansion but useless as a guide to long-run changes in the state’s underlying economic fundamentals.

Therefore, where available, we used data for 1988 and 1998. This ten-year span has the advantage of comparing essentially peak-to-peak economic conditions. Unfortunately, in many cases we were forced to adjust the time period of analysis to fit the available data. Therefore, for some measures, the ten-year data series ends in 1996 or 1997; for some others, historical data for ten years back simply are not available. The time period for each measure is identified in the detailed tables.

For each measure we began by comparing the change in the current conditions within a city to that of a decade (or selected time period) ago. Have conditions improved or deteriorated during the time period? We also looked for variability among the cities; i.e., is there a wide divergence among the 13 cities, or are the trends similar? Then, in most cases, we compared the recent data for each city with the average for its surrounding county and for the state as a whole. How do the data in the central city compare to its surrounding area? In most cases, we view this relative measure of progress as most important. Finally, this report summarizes data in the following eight major areas:

• Demographics
• Economics
• Property values
• Crime
• K–12 education
• Government finance
• Health
• Environmental conditions

FUTURE RESEARCH
It is hoped this is the first of a long, useful series of Status of Michigan Cities reports. Unfortunately, good data are not available for many urban quality-of-life subjects under current policy discussion. For example, few Michigan cities systematically inventory brownfield sites within their borders. Another example is the lack of a central database on the age and condition of such public infrastructure as roads, sewers, water systems, and school facilities. Such data would be invaluable in the debates concerning urban sprawl, brownfield redevelopment, and state support for K-12 education. Government at all levels – federal, state, and local – must assist researchers in establishing a central database containing vital information on urban areas.

Contact State and Federal Affairs Division - 517.908.0305
Arnold Weinfeld, aweinfeld@mml.org
Summer Minnick, sminnick@mml.org
Joe Fivas, jfivas@mml.org
Andy Schor, aschor@mml.org
Andrea Messinger, amessinger@mml.org
Nikole Brown, nbrown@mml.org