2012 Michigan State House Prospectus

With the general election only nine months away, the time for determining a general sense of the Michigan State House contests is upon us. The state house experienced significant turnover in the 2010 election, as the Republicans handed the Democrats the worst drubbing in the state’s history since the mid-1870s. The GOP won 20 seats and brought their total number of representatives to 63, the highest the party has had since 1952. Gaining unexpected control of the State House in 2010 allowed the Republicans to control the redistricting process in the following year, a godsend for the party that had created one of the more effective remaps in the previous redistricting cycle in 2001. With the new map awaiting candidates, what sort of early analysis can be given nine months before November?

Using precinct level data for every election going back to 1996, I sought to answer this question. I recoded every precinct in the state to the new State House, State Senate, and Congressional districts. With this data, I used election returns from 2004 onward to determine the average Democratic share of the vote in the top of the ticket race (either Presidential or Gubernatorial), the State House, and the Democratic Baseline (which is determined by averaging the Democratic vote of the two State Board of Education candidates) races. Of the past four election cycles, two were decidedly Democratic years (2006 and 2008), one moderately Republican (2004), and one overwhelmingly Republican (2010). I then determined the average Democratic share of the vote in each of the three different contests. I classified the 110 state house seats into five different groups; Safe Republican, Leans Republican, Swing, Leans Democratic, and Safe Democratic.



Of the 110 State House districts, 23 are Safe Democratic, 19 Lean Democratic, 24 are Swing seats, 19 Lean Republican, and 25 are Safe Republican. The Districts are shown according to their classification in the map below.

The pre-2010 parameters of Detroit being a Democratic bastion and rural Michigan being overwhelmingly Republican still exist. However, the significant drop in Detroit’s population between 2000 and 2010 has reduced the number of safe Democratic seats. However, Detroit’s population decline may be a blessing in disguise, as the dispersal of Democratic voters to suburban communities in Oakland and Wayne County makes many of these districts more competitive for Democratic candidates. Indeed, the decline of Detroit and the dispersal of its population is the unspoken weapon that the Michigan Democratic Party has against yet another skillful Republican remap.

Each party is certain to lose one seat to the other side. The Democrats will lose the 42nd District, which was recreated in southern Livingston County, while the Republicans will lose the 55th District that was remade to be a Democratic leaning seat surrounding Ann Arbor. Two other Republican-held seats are Democratic-leaning districts; District 110 (western Upper Peninsula) and District 57 (Lenawee County), both seats had been held by popular Democratic Representatives who were term-limited and won by the GOP in 2010. In the past decade, the Upper Peninsula has become more Republican for top of the ticket races, but it much more Democratic in State House contests.

Of the 24 Swing State House seats, seven are held by Democrats, while 17 are controlled by the GOP. Interestingly, all 17 Republican held seats were won in 2010, meaning that candidates who were elected in the 2010 wave election might find that some voters might have remorse over selecting a GOP candidate the last time around. A majority of the Swing districts are located outside of metropolitan Detroit, although Districts 18, 21, 23, and 24 are all located in either Wayne or Oakland Counties.

If I had to select five seats to watch, I would pick the following:

1. 52nd District (northern and western Washtenaw County). The 52nd is currently represented by Republican Mark Ouimet, who ran strongly on Synder’s coattails. Synder pulled the highest Republican vote share for any candidate in Washtenaw County since John Engler in 1998, and Ouimet did his best to model his candidacy as Synder: a moderate businessman who would represent the district in a non-ideological fashion. Without Synder on the ballot in 2012 (and Obama on the ticket), it remains to be seen whether Ouimet will be able to hold onto this seat. The 52nd was made a bit more Republican in the 2011 redistricting process, losing the northern portions of Ann Arbor while adding some rural sections of southern Washtenaw County, but the seat still remains a toss-up district.

2. 91st District (northern and eastern Muskegon County). Republican Holly Hughes won this seat in 2010 after losing her first attempt in 2008. Hughes, who is a wealthy and well connected GOP businesswoman, got a new district that was made slightly more Republican. However, organized labor still has a strong pull in this district, and a strong populist Democratic candidate might find success against a Michigan version of Mitt Romney.

3. 108th District (Delta, Dickinson, and Menominee Counties). This swinging Upper Peninsula district went hard for Republicans in 2010. While the 110th district will be a much easier district for Democrats to pick up, it figures to be a good election night if the GOP is struggling to hold the 108th as well.

4. 76th District (Grand Rapids). The 76th District was modified significantly from its 2001 incarnation. Previously a district covering the west side of Grand Rapids, the new 76th covers the outlying portions of the city that were annexed after 1959, and tends to be much more Republican leaning than the core portion of the city. While Democratic incumbent Roy Scmidt is popular and will likely hold this seat, if he is in trouble in November 2012, chances of a Democratic takeover of the house will be pretty slim.

5. 23rd District (downriver Wayne County). Another working-class district that went Republican in 2010, the 23rd is certainly to be contested.

The Democrats need to pick up nine seats to regain the majority. While the presidential election should increase the Democratic turnout, whether this can translate into seats from a map by a skilled Republican redistricting plan remains to be seen. At this date, I would suggest that the Democrats will gain 7 seats if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. But, we still have nine months to go. Below are some relevant maps of the baseline status and current partisan control of existing house districts.

2011 Book Awards

What a better way to start off the New Year by remembering all the books I read in 2011? As I sit and enjoy beautiful Texas weather (meaning sunny and seventy degrees on January 2), I looked again through my day planner, and noted that I read 91 books this past year. Of these, twenty three were fiction. The bulk of my fiction reading involved Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, which consisted of seven different books that amounted to over 6,500 pages of enjoyable historical fiction. This series certainly deserves the title of my favorite work of fiction in 2011. Incidentally, the worst book that I read this year was Dow Mossman’s Stones of Summer. This book was so bad I made myself finish it; although I should have known that it was a stinker as it was published by my old employer Barnes and Noble.

As far as my favorite work of non-fiction, five works stand out. Honorable mentions include Matt Dillinger’s Interstate 69 (which provides an excellent look at on unfinished section of the interstate system) and Isabel Wilkerson’s Warmth of Other Suns that examines the tale of three participants in America’s Great Migration. My third place award goes to Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood’s Dream City: Race, Power, and Decline of Washington DC. Jaffe and Sherwood provide an extremely readable story of Washington DC’s decline between 1974 and 1994 under the leadership of Marion Barry, a fall that has been reversed in recent years by strong municipal leadership and a growing federal government workforce. Peter Goodwin claims second place with The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. I read this book on the plane and was hooked on this personal and detailed narrative decline of Africa’s most successful country in the past thirty years. The other 64 works of non-fiction were great, but Don Peck’s Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It claims the title of my favorite book from 2011. Some readers of this blog might have come across Peck’s essay in Atlantic from this summer, but do yourself a service and read his book. While a shorter work, Pinched does a masterful job comparing the current recession with similar periods of economic malaise. Peck argues that broader transformation of America from a manufacturing to service based economy has created a elite class Americans who are largely located in distinct neighborhoods in a few metropolitan neighborhoods. At the same time, the social stability of many middle class households is declining and exhibits many of the same woes that plague inner-city neighborhoods. While Peck’s solutions at the end of Pinched could use some more details, I couldn’t recommend a better book for people to read to better understand our current economic predicament.

Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography
Alan Mallach, A Decent Home
Latimore et al, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning
Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas about Cities
Robert Caro: The Means of Ascent: LBJ from 1941-1948
Matt Dillinger, Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway
Tom Wolfe, Bonfires of the Vanities
Randy Kennedy, Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York
WPA Guide to Dallas, Texas
Clyde Prestonwitz, The Betrayal of American Prosperity
Robert Harris, The Ghostwriter
Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones
Peter Hessler, Country Driving
Dallas AIA, Dallas AIA Guide
David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter
Ben Barnes, Barn Building, Barn Burning
Ruth Morgan, Governance By Decree
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Michael Hazel (ed), Dallas Reconsidered: Essays in Local History
Dow Mossman, Stones of Summer
Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise
Cyril Paumler, Creating a Vibrant Center City
Peter Harnik, Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities
Vincent Bugolosi, Helter Skelter
Douglas Egerton, Years of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War
David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
David Potter, The Impending Crisis: America Between 1846 and 1861
Colleen McCullough, First Man in Rome
D Magazine, 30 Years of Great Stories
Al Greene, Big D: A History
Allan Jacobs, Looking at Cities
Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown
Robert Fairbanks, For the City as a Whole: Planning in Dallas, 1840-1965
Colleen McCullough, Fortunes Favorites
Daniel Sharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White
Colleen McCullough, Caesar’s Women
Eric Pooley, The Climate War: True Belivers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth
Peter Goodwin, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe
Bill Minutaglio, The Hidden City: Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas
Colleen McCullough, Caesar
Peter Carr, A Month in the Country
Peter Goodwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Steve Luxenberg, Annie’s Ghost: A Journey into a Family Secret
Colleen McCullough, October Horse
Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm
Jeff Greenfield, Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics
David Grann, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
Colleen McCullough, October Horse
Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City
John Grisham, The Summons
John Grisham, The Associate
Sulieman Osman, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Kevin Harney and Bob Brouwer, The U Turn Church
Henry Boonstra, Our School: Calvin College 1875-2001
Richard Rubin, A Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Michael Lewis, Moneyball
Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, Dream City: Race, Power, and Decline of Washington DC
John Grisham, The Confession
Ian Pears, Stone’s Fall
Luther Snow, Congregational Based Asset Mapping
Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflection on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street
Wendy Kopp, A Chance to Make History
Keith Meldahl, Hard Road West: History and Geology Along the Gold Rush Trail
Gil Rendle and Alice Munn, Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations
Don Peck, Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It
Ben Cramer, What It Takes
Rick Perlstein, The Stock Ticker and the Super Jumbo: How the Democrats Can Again Become America’s Dominant Political Party
Ken Folett, Pillars of the Earth
Jack Rovoke, Original Meanings: Politics and the Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
Ken Folett, World Without End
James O’Shea, The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plunder Great American Newspapers
Winfried Gallagher, House Thinking: A Room by Room Look at How We Live
Tea Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Donald Stroker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the American Civil War
Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beats: Love, Terror, and an American Family In Hitler’s Berlin
Ian Frazier, Roads to Siberia
Buzz Bizzinger, Three Nights in August
Ken Folett, Fall of Giants
Jeffrey Eugindes, The Marriage Plot
Colin Woodward, American Nations
Ray Jacobs, Home Buying for Dummies
Jennifer Gantz, Gotham in the Shadows of Moses and Jacobs
Heather Richardson, West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War
Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Andrew Meier, Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall
John Mosier, The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War One
Thomas Stanley, The Millionaire Next Door

Michigan: A Demographic and Political Analysis in Three Parts

Part I: Introduction and General Population Trends, 1960-2010

Easily lost in all the hand wringing following last February’s announcement that Michigan was the only state in the Union to lose population over the past decade was the broader implications of the 2010 decennial census data. Michigan has experienced significant population transition within its borders over the past decades, and to better understand the impact of this shift I spent some time over the past few months reviewing census data for units of governments on the county subdivision level between 1960 and 2010.

I chose to analyze county subdivision level data for a number of reasons. First, county subdivisions, which are defined in Michigan as municipalities or townships, have largely had stable boundaries since 1960, thanks to the 1963 state constitution which limited physical growth by municipalities by placing high barriers against annexation by granting townships the ability to become charter townships. A township must have a population 2,000 to become a charter township, and under state statue charter townships that have a population density of greater than 150 people per square mile (along with a few other conditions) are protected from annexation by other municipalities. With the exception of Oakland County, there have been relatively few border changes and mergers of county subdivisions in the past 50 years. Secondly, census demographic and economic data is readily available starting with the 1970 census, and there is some racial data available from the 1960 census. This makes a longitudinal study of demographic changes in Michigan’s communities possible, and sheds light on changes that occurred following 1960. Finally, partisan electoral data that is available for county subdivisions shows the impact of these population and demographic changes.

Just a small note: some of the population numbers and demographic data to not add up to 100 percent, particularly for the 1980 census data. For example, in Burton City, the 1980 total population was 29,976, while the population total for the racial identification question was 29,929, a sum larger by 47 people. In this sort of instance I used the racial data to provide a demographic percentage for analysis, but kept the total population number given the 1980 census. All total population data from the 1960 to 1990 censuses were obtained from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget, while racial data for this time period were obtained from the National Historical Geographic Information System. Total population and racial data from the 2000 and 2010 census were obtained from the US Census website. Some municipalities are split between two counties, and tabulated as separate entities

General Population Trends, 1960-2010

Michigan’s population increased rapidly between 1960 and 1970, but grew at a much slower rate in the forty years that followed as shown in Figure 1. 7,823,194 residents lived in Michigan in 1960, a figure that climbed by more than a million ten years later to 8,875,083, a 13.4% increase. By 1980 the population increased to 9,262,078, a gain of 386,995 more residents. A modest growth in population followed in 1990 giving Michigan a population of 9,295,297 residents, and the economic growth during the following decade resulted in a total population of 9,938,444 and gain of 643,147 people. The economic malaise over the most recent decade dropped Michigan’s population by 54,804 residents.



As Figure 1 shows, Michigan’s population has become more diverse over the past fifty years. Racial and ethnic data gathered in 1960 asked respondents whether they were White or non-White, the later numbered 737,329, constituting 9.4% of the total population. By 2010 Michigan’s non-White population had more than doubled, reaching 21.1%. Michigan’s 2010 White population of 7,803,120 is smaller than its 1970 population (7,833,473), while the state’s Black population increased from 991,067 to 1,400,362 during the same time period. While the state’s Black and White population stagnated over the past decade, the number of Hispanic residents increased significantly, rising from 323,877 to 436,358. Asians also account for a growing share of Michigan’s population, growing from 175,311 to 238,199 over the past decade.

While Michigan’s was becoming more diverse, it was also becoming more dispersed. In 1960, Michigan’s 20 largest communities were home to more than 3,309,313 people, or 42% of the state’s total population, but 2010 these same 20 communities only were residences to 22.3% or 2,208,322. Figure 2 shows just how drastic the population decline was. Detroit accounts for 86.8% of the total population loss, but only six of the 20 subdivisions gained residents and of these only Ann Arbor and Warren added more than 40,000 residents. With the exception of Detroit and Flint, communities that lost residents overwhelmingly did so between 1960 and 1980, and stabilized somewhat in the thirty years that followed.

Communities that gained the most residents between 1960 and 2010 tended to be communities in metropolitan southeast Michigan that captured Detroit’s fleeing residents. Only two communities outside of metropolitan Detroit were among the top twenty (Georgetown Township in Ottawa County and Kentwood in Kent County).



Michigan’s population dispersal has reduced the state’s population density. While Michigan’s overall population density increased slightly from 138 persons per square mile in 1960 to 174 by 2010, the addition of 2,115,250 new residents during the same time period meant that much of the population growth went into new development on the outskirts of the urban fringe. The table below shows communities with the highest population density back in 1960. When viewed next to the 2010 population density figures, you can see what a beating the urban core of Michigan took in the past fifty years. While the Detroit metropolitan region could arguably supported a dense commuter rail network in 1960, as numerous communities had population densities greater than 4,000 people per square mile that is thought as the minimal density needed for effective mass transit, the de-densification of communities such as Detroit and Highland Park makes the implementation of mass transit much less cost-effective.



Of course the movement of people from central cities to suburbs is nothing new in Michigan, let alone the United States. However, the dispersal of Michigan’s White population from urban areas was matched by two smaller-sized migrations of Black residents. The first relatively minuscule migration was from historic rural Black areas of western Michigan (such as Lake, Van Buren, and Cass Counties) into other urban centers in Michigan, especially Benton Harbor, Flint, and Detroit. The second and larger migration was the movement away from core urban centers, especially in Detroit and Flint, to the surrounding suburbs. Most of the Black population movement has flown to working class suburbs on the periphery of established urban centers. Suburbs such as Harper Woods and Eastpointe literally changed overnight, while other communities such as Oak Park and Lathrup Village have steadily attracted new Black residents over decades.



In contrast to the movement of Black Michiganders, Hispanics have concentrated outside of Southeast Michigan and are spread throughout Michigan. Only 10% of the total Hispanic population resides Detroit and only make up 6.8% of the city’s total population. While county subdivisions with the greatest increase in the Hispanic share of the total population are listed below. Interestingly, rural communities in western Michigan are home to large sizable Hispanic populations, largely due to the reliance farming communities have on migrant workers who have historically been Hispanic. However, large Hispanic communities have moved to urban centers and suburbs in western Michigan, including Grand Rapids and Holland. Kent County in particular has a large Hispanic population that is just under 10% of the total population.

First Presbyterian Church Dallas Report

First PresbyterIan Church of Dallas Report Another busy few weeks, that resulted in no postings. However, my Presbyterian friends might be interested in this report I did for a congregation in Dallas over the past few months.

Kent County redistricting plan violates long-standing principles- GR Press Editorial

(Published in the Grand Rapids Press Saturday August 20, 2011-pb)

In Michigan, the seasons inevitably follow one another, although sometimes winter seems to last forever. In the same manner, partisan battles over redistricting assuredly follow the decennial census.

The redistricting rancor following the 2010 census, particularly in Michigan, has a special flavor; as congressional districts resembling a cross (State House District 32), the letter E (Senate District 1), and an indescribable district that snakes from the Del Ray neighborhood in Detroit to Pontiac in Oakland County (Congressional District 14) are now part of the state’s political geography for the next 10 years, should court challenges fail.

Unfortunately, cartographic oddities to create partisan gain clutter the new map approved for the Kent County Board of Commissioners. The Republican-drawn map violates long-standing principles of compactness and preserving communities of interest that had guided redistricting at the county level in the past three cycles.


The population deviation between the largest and smallest districts is 10.87 percent, a deviation that remains acceptable under state law based on dated case law (Abate v. Mundt) that could be open to a federal court challenge since the courts ruled in Larios v. Cox that population deviations larger than 10 percent are susceptible and not considered a “safe harbor.”

Similarly, the map violates the portions of Michigan law guiding county level redistricting and the “Apol Standards” which guide state and congressional redistricting by unnecessarily breaking municipal lines in the creation of districts. Finally, the map seeks to punish a number of supporters of the PDR movement in Kent County, forcing incumbents Stan Ponstein and Jack Boelema into a Republican primary, incumbents Jim Talen and Candace Chivis into a Democratic primary, and incumbent Republican Michael Wawee and Democrat Carol Hennessy into a general election matchup. Any map which sees to eliminate six incumbents who have long-standing ties with their districts deserves strict scrutiny.

A map which avoids the mistakes listed above is achievable and shown in the included maps and tables. This “rational” plan reduces the population deviation, creates two compact minority majority total population districts, reduces the number of municipal breaks, and preserves existing incumbent-district relationships.



Population Equality

I kept the population deviation percentage below 10 percent, with a total range of 9.1 percent that is smaller than the 10.87 percent population deviation in the accepted map. The largest district is District 9 (Grandville and southern Wyoming) with 33,181 people, while District 5 (Ada and Cascade) has the smallest population of 30,276 residents for a total deviation in population of 2,905, a figure which is smaller than the approved map and the Democratic plan.



Compact Minority-Majority Districts

This plan creates two minority majority districts in total population. The 14th District is a compact district consisting of the Black Hills and Roosevelt Park neighborhoods of Grand Rapids and the northeast portion of Wyoming that has served as the core Hispanic neighborhoods in the region for the past thirty years.

Similarly, the 16th District includes the core African American neighborhoods bounded by Wealthy Street, Fuller Avenue, Burton Street, and Jefferson Avenue, and also includes the growing African American presence south of 28th Street and west of Kalamazoo Avenue.

The 14th District has a Hispanic percentage of 53 percent and a voting age population percentage of 46 percent, while the 16th District has a African American population of 53 percent and a Voting Age Population of 52%.



Preserving Communities of Interest

The plan also minimizes the number of municipality breaks. The adopted plan has six municipalities broken into different districts, and 10 districts include split municipalities. This plan splits only four municipalities (Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, and Gaines Township), and follows the requests of Plainfield Township and East Grand Rapids to each be kept in one county commission district. Similarly, in this plan there are seven districts that contain a split municipality (Districts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 14), which is largely due to the fact that Grand Rapids, Wyoming, and Kentwood are too large to contain in a single commission seat.

The Board of Commissioners map adopted by the Kent County Redistricting Commission is one that will not serve the metropolitan Grand Rapids region well for the next 10 years. Representative democracy works best when ties between legislators and their constituents are visible both in common sense and on a map.

As James Madison once noted in Federalist 10, “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” This statement has not historically applied to those who have led Kent County since 1831, although the adopted map certainly does.

A former resident of Grand Rapids, Peter Bratt is redistricting coordinator for the City of Dallas, Texas, and writes frequently on Michigan history and politics at peterabratt.blogspot.com. E-mail: peterbratt@gmail.com

The Other Part of the Story

(photo credit Tyler Wright)

For those not familiar with recent American historical scholarship on urban history over the past two decades, the book that defined the field was Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crsis: Race and Inequity in Postwar Detroit. Sugrue’s Origins launched a reconsideration of the standard narrative of America’s post-war urban decline. In this influential work, Sugrue documents the spatial and racial tensions within Detroit after 1945 that created fierce battles over housing, employment, and space, which led to a white conservative city leadership that drew support from white neighborhood groups and downtown business interests. However, the city’s leadership was unable to stem the massive deindustrialization that occurred within Detroit over the next twenty years, as manufacturing firms moved to modern facilities in the suburbs smaller cities, laying off numerous workers whom were predominately African American. As city residents adjusted to rising economic insecurity, residents struggled to define spatial boundaries of race, leading to ferocious grassroots activism from white neighborhood associations against African American residents seeking residential and social mobility.

By pushing the start date of “discontent” with growth liberalism back to 1945, Origins allows for a broad understanding of growth liberalism’s tensions, especially between African Americans seeking economic security and whites seeking property security within the confines of the New Deal coalition.

The ideologies of grassroots racial and individual liberalism formulated in Origins remains somewhat incomplete. Were members of these coalitions motivated by economic and property interests alone? Such a limited definition reduces the powerful role that religious conservatism played in developing the rise of individual liberalism in Michigan, especially amongst white ethnics whose sense of place was dominated by spatial religious boundaries. At the same time, racial liberalism was also strongly influenced by a rising religious ideology of liberation and social justice theology that replaced the cautious religious conservatism that marked much of the African American leadership.

If Origins focused on the dismantling of “growth liberalism” (ie New Deal liberalism) through the forces of spatial segregation, deindustrialization, and political fracturing in places like Detroit, Suleiman Osman’s The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York looks at another story that began in the midst of the old order shattering. Osman’s work, which came out in March, provides a stunning addition to the literature on post-war urban America and fully deserves the status acclaimed to Sugrue’s work. Both Origins of the Urban Crisis and Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn are books well worth adding to your summer reading list.

As its title suggests, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn looks at the gentrification of the brownstone neighborhoods in Brooklyn that were largely built between 1830 and 1910. These neighborhoods are now familiar to a generation of hipsters, as places such as Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Fort Greene seem to provide a level of urban authenticity that may children of a suburban nation seek to reshape their identity. Yet this present day understanding of Brooklyn as a patchwork of distinct neighborhoods is largely a creation of the new residents who arrived in the post-industrialization of Brooklyn, residents who were overwhelmingly whiter, wealthier, better educated, and closely identified with the grassroots urban rebellion best exemplified by Jane Jacobs. In order to create a sense of place, both to establish their communities and identify their neighborhoods as marketable places for other potential likeminded homebuyers, these residents researched their neighborhoods, using history to create an identity in the urban wilderness, often using geographic identifications that predated the industrial metropolis.

A resurgent localism is a hallmark of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn. The local neighborhood, having been freed from being part of the working class urban wilderness, was reclaimed as an organic and authentic neighborhood that rested in historical value. The new residents rejected the growth liberalism of Robert Moses that stressed new highways, new buildings, and the Corbusian model for the city in the garden, and instead pushed for “the ballet of the street” that Jane Jacobs spoke elegantly about in The Death and Life of American Cities. This localism was also expressed in political identity, as the new residents rejected the ethnic Democratic “machine” politics and instead joined reform Democratic organizations that eventually gained political prominence.

If Origins of the Urban Crisis focused on the conflict between ethnic white and African Americans, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn finds that a three-way battle occurred between the white-collar whites, the ethnic whites, and African Americans. Much as in Anthony Lucas’ Common Ground, the bitterest conflict was often between the ethnic and white collar whites, the latter who tried to identify and work with African Americans, but at the same time helped bring an economic revitalization of neighborhoods that pushed out these residents with high real estate prices.

Does Osman’s case study of Brooklyn fit in the larger context of urban America? In certain other northeast metropolitan regions like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and even Chicago, what happened in Brooklyn is similar. On a much smaller scale, this is what happened in Grand Rapids’ Heritage Hill and Wealthy Street neighborhoods. However, the post-industrial centers such as metropolitan Detroit and many other declining Midwestern regions, it would be hard to a similar situation unfolding. While the Midwest as a whole has struggled economically, I would think that the twin factors of economic decentralization and the resulting job sprawl limits the possibility the feasibility a Brooklyn-like revitalization occurring.

That is not to say that such an urban reinvention could not occur in the Midwest. Given the incredibly low cost of housing, one would think that regional or state-wide policies would be helpfully ingredients to add to the revitalization toolkit, including college tuition support, consolidation of duplicative governmental services, and increasing the costs of greenfield development while encouraging urban redevelopment to reduce job sprawl. Given the important of regional economic and housing strategies today, policymakers would be well advised to consider creating additional tools to ensure that both the local neighborhoods and regional employment base can thrive in a world ironically closer to the brownstone than to the assembly line.

First thoughts on the new 3rd District

(Photo Credit T.J. Hamilton)

Lost in the middle of the extended Memorial Day weekend was the leaking of a draft Congressional District map drawn by the Redistricting Committee Republicans in the State House and Senate. Since the Detroit News and Grand Rapids Press have covered this story within their pages, I won’t go into greater detail about how the Michigan Chamber of Commerce was deeply involved with drawing the map. This map was confirmed when the Republican members of the Redistricting Committees in the State House and Senate released their maps last week Friday morning.

However, the newly drawn 3rd District deserves a closer look. While Terri Land thought otherwise in the Grand Rapids Press article (stating “we really have dodged a bullet for a long time here by not having Kent County split”), Kent County is split under the existing map, with the 3rd District encompassing the whole of Ionia and Barry Counties, and includes all of Kent County with the exception of Alpine, Solon, Sparta, and Tyrone Townships (which are in the 2nd District). Under the proposed map, the new 3rd District would include the entirety of Barry, Calhoun, and Ionia Counties, and portions of Kent and Montcalm Counties. Only a small part of Montcalm County containing portion Greenville City and Eureka Township would be in the 3rd, while all of Kent County with the exception of part of Byron Township, Walker, Grandville, Wyoming, and Kentwood would be in the new district.

The breaking up of metropolitan Grand Rapids into two Congressional Districts is a first-time occurrence since Michigan gained statehood in 1837. I consider metropolitan Grand Rapids to consist of Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, Grand Rapids Township, East Grand Rapids, Grandville, and Walker. While moving the suburbs of Walker, Grandville, Wyoming, and Kentwood into the 2nd District might have been due to Republican leaders in Kent County wanting a member of Congress who actually represented his constituents, the new map also removes some portions of the metropolitan region that became increasingly Democratic over the past decade. In particular, Kentwood moved from being a Republican stronghold to a competitive (if Republican leaning) municipality. With the new 3rd District population at 714, 539 residents, this proposed district is 8,565 over the 705,974 congressional district size, meaning that a portion of Kentwood or Wyoming is likely to be assigned to District 3.

From a review of election data between 1998 and 2010 (as well as the 2010 census data), it doesn’t appear that the new map helps current Republican Congressman Justin Amash with reelection in 2012. The new 3rd District was made more Democratic to help preserve the seats of Republicans Tim Walberg (District 7) and Thad McCotter (District 11). 25% of the new 3rd District will have not been previously represented by Amash in Congress, while 24% Amash’s current district will move to the 2nd District. An overwhelming percentage of these new residents in the 3rd District will hail from Calhoun County, which has historically been a Democratic stronghold. Calhoun County had a population of 136,146 in 2010, with half of its population living in Democratic strongholds of Battle Creek (52,347), Springfield (5,189), and Albion (8,616), where the Democratic baseline has not fallen below 60% in the past five election cycles.

Looking at the new 3rd District from the past six election cycles, the data shows that it will take the right Democratic candidate to win this seat. Only two Democratic candidates have won the new 3rd District: Barack Obama with 50.4%, and Carl Levin with 54.2% in 2008. Granholm came close to winning the district in 2006 with 49.4%, and Stabenow received 48.9%. Democrats further down the ticket tended to under-perform, although the Democratic baseline for the district was 46.7% in 2008 and 44.3% in 2006. Democrats throughout the 3rd District did far poorer in 2010, and the Democratic baseline dropped to 42.3%

The Democratic strategy for within the new 3rd District would be as follows: Have at least a 25,000 vote edge from the city of Grand Rapids, win a majority in Kent County, win Battle Creek, Springfield, and Albion with a 7,000 vote margin, carry Calhoun County with at least 55% of the vote, and get at least 45% of the vote in Barry and Ionia Counties. A tall order, but certainly doable.

The great challenge for a Democratic candidate would be to find money to advertise in the two media markets of Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. Will the impact of television advertising is, at best, minimal on getting voters to the voting booth, it is still a required part of any effective campaign. A Democratic would also benefit from having a number of urban areas in the district (Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Albion, and Greenville) that are strong Democratic centers and also eminently walkable by canvassers. In order to have a candidate make a strong effort at cutting the GOP margin in rural Kent, Ionia, and Barry Counties, there needs to be a revitalization of the Democratic County parties to build a presence in these areas.

Given that Amash underperformed the Republican baseline by 3% in 2010, this district should be a potential opportunity for the Democrats to challenge again in 2012. Having a candidate like Mark Schauer would be a big coup for the Democrats, given that Schauer has consistently overperformed the Democratic baseline in every race he's been in since winning election to the State House in 1996. I've averaged the last six races Schauer ran, and it averages to about 4%. While this wasn't enough to save Schauer in the 2010 GOP wave, I wouldn't under estimate his ability to win in a new district. In many respects, the new GOP congressional map had to make the decision whether to through Schauer's home county of Calhoun in Walberg or Amash's district. It shows the State Republicans' dislike for the 3rd District Representative when they deliver him the unwanted gift of a potential Schauer challenge.

Where Things Went Wrong 50 Years Ago

(Photo Credit: PhotoLab507)

Since I have been very busy with work over the past few months, I have neglect writing on the blog. However, I had a GR Press reporter ask me a few months ago about my article about planning in Grand Rapids between 1949 and 1959. In particular, he asked what I thought would have worked better than the reformers' strategy to work with the business coalition and pursue downtown urban renewal.

As far as specific decisions go, the rejection of the 1959 consolidation measure by the voters was a blow, but I don't think it would have changed the underlying development of the GR region. If I were among the powers that be back in 1961 (and I'm not among them even in 2011), I certainly would have focused more on neighborhood revitalization strategies earlier than working on downtown renewal. The city lost almost 20,000 people between 1970 and 1980, although some of the neighborhoods surrounding the downtown were already losing people by 1960. However, the two biggest blunders that occurred this time period was 1) the siting of Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, and 2) the locating of GR Airport southeast of Grand Rapids.

(Photo Credit: Tyler Vogt)

GVSU was located in the farmland of west Michigan largely because the land was available and it was the policy of the state of Michigan to locate new campuses in greenfield developments. GR could have done something similar to what was done in Chicago with the University of Illinois-Chicago campus-put a new large institution on the edge of downtown to shore of the business district. I think locating the school somewhere on the existing GRCC campus, or to the west of Downtown where the Pew campus is now located, would have done a lot of creating a commercial base so needed in downtown. A thoughtful acknowledgment of the role a community college has in the region would move GRCC from its downtown campus to Calvin's old campus at Franklin and Fuller, and the creating of a new branch campus in Wyoming near the city's commercial core. Putting four different GRCC campuses in the larger metropolitan region (one in the urban core, one in "downtown" Wyoming, one on the west side of Grand Rapids, and a final campus in Kentwood) could have tied the metropolitan core closer together along educational and institutional lines.

The other single pressing mistake was the location of the airport in its current placement on the far edge of southeast Kentwood. The metropolitan region of west Michigan is the Holland/Muskegon/Grand Rapids triangle, and by all accounts the airport should have been located at some point on the west side of the Grand, most likely in Walker near the intersection of 96, Kinney, and Richmond. the later addition of Interstate 196 could have been easily moved Wilson Road to M-45, and then cut to downtown. This relocation would have made the west Michigan much more of a unified economic region and the west side of Grand Rapids would have been easily available for zoning as industrial, thus preserving the city's industrial fabric.

Finally, while highways are necessary but often done in a poorly designed fashion, I am a big fan of parks. The city had a master plan drawn up in 1917 that has some beautiful sketches of parkways along Plaster and Silver Creeks, as well as the Grand and Thornapple River. If we had developed a parkway system, as well as creating a greenbelt park system around the metro region as proposed by Fred Meijer in 2004 (before it was voted down). The broader Grand Rapids needs to have a land use policy that makes it stand out among other Midwestern communities. Right now it does not.

In his new book The Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser argues that the American city, long the whipping child for ever failing in American social policy since the Revolution, is much more environmentally sustainable and the hotbed of American economic innovation in the revitalizing economy. To continue pushing federal policies that subsidize sprawl, underwrites mortgages for large homes built in greenfield developments, and enforce euclidean zoning as opposed to form-based zoning is a recipe for doom.

RAPID Sprawl

No pun intended, but there is an election in various communities across Michigan tomorrow that deserves your attention. Unlike last year, I won’t go into detail on what the end result will be, but I do expect the Rapid millage to pass by a more comfortable margin than the Grand Rapids property tax millage did a year ago. The supporters of the Rapid millage are much better organized, willing to contest the ITP Watch folks aggressively online, and have effectively mobilized the GOTV efforts. I’d put the margin at 54% in favor, give or take 2% (A full and frank disclosure notice: I have advised the Friends of Transit for this millage issue-PB).

The bigger question that needs to be answered on Wednesday morning after the election results come in. Three stories from today’s Grand Rapids Press tell the tale of continued sprawl; the relocation of the regional Social Security office from downtown Grand Rapids to Celebration Village, the continued attempts to develop an urban lifestyle center at East Beltline and Knapp Avenue, and the continued rise in gasoline prices in the region and the United States. The United States in many ways is like a gambler who placed all his bets on one chip, and in this case the gambler placed the chips on the automobile at the expense of other transportation options, whether it be rail transit, buses, biking, or walking. The American way of life that became a natural birthright after 1945 has tied this nation to the path of continued sprawl, whether in terms of employment or housing that is largely inaccessible without an automobile. While gas prices might go down slightly in the next few years, it only buys this nation some more time to put some long-needed land use and transit policies into place. Americans love to mock Europeans for their high gas taxes and mass transit, but the bet European nations made to rebuilt their mass transit systems in the aftermath of World War Two is a bet that surely looks better than the one the United States made.

The successful passage of the Rapid measure will help metropolitan Grand Rapids better address the needs of serving a largely metropolitan region. However, the answer to limiting regional employment and housing sprawl lies with all the communities within Kent County, especially those on the outlying fringe of the urban core. There is a role for government in reforming our current land use policies, and that is to diminish the incentives for sprawl that redirect development to the existing core and to reduce the strain of providing infrastructure to new green field developments. The City of Grand Rapids recently adopted a form-based zoning code that restores traditional land use planning that existed before the 1920s, and I encourage all communities within metropolitan Grand Rapids to consider following this path. The Rapid millage in not a silver bullet for long-standing problems facing metropolitan Grand Rapids, but it is certainly a start.

Mark your calendars

Photo credit Brian Kelly

Folks in Texas have a saying about the summer. Summer lasts from Memorial Day to October, and it is best enjoyed in Colorado. Now, since this year will be my first summer in Texas, Susan and I have decided to avoid it for a bit longer by heading to Michigan for Memorial Day week. Colorado will have to wait another year.

Every time we visit west Michigan is wonderful, but we often are so caught up meeting with family that we miss our friends. Or, getting together with friends is a last minute event that is very hard to fit in everyone's schedule. So, this time I'm going to do things a bit differently. If you are interested in hanging out for dinner, or drinks, or just catching up, level a comment on this post, or give me an email at peterbratt at gmail.com. It would be great to see you all again, and I hope that you feel the same way.