opinion

Sprawl, class, race and Northland’s demise

It’s easy, I suppose, to mourn the death of a mall as if it’s about shopping, and shopping alone.

And no doubt, people's shopping habits are chief among the things killing malls in America.

But the part of the Northland story that's missing is how closely the mall's rise and fall tracks the movement of wealth in this region, from Detroit, out to the suburbs, and into the hinterlands.

And in that context, Northland is another data point in what should be an ongoing conversation about how sprawl, class-conscious policy-making and racism have shaped this region — in almost every way for the worst.

Northland’s death, like its life, isn’t just about one thing. It's about the complexity of the geographic and social dynamics that have roiled southeast Michigan for a half-century or more.

When Northland opened in 1954, it was on the edge of areas that were growing, and growing more wealthy, thanks to the Federal Housing Act of 1934 and the GI Bill of 1944. Detroiters seeking spacious lots and idyllic neighborhoods were moving into Oakland County, and taking their wealth with them.

They were white Detroiters, by design. Both the housing act and the GI Bill left black families out of the move north until the late 1960s and early 1970s. And local laws as well as business practices also created white-only suburbs around Northland and out farther.

Even by the time blacks began moving in significant numbers to the suburbs, the economic die was cast. Because they were left out of the wealth-building that came with initial suburban home ownership, their ventures into the suburbs were mostly possible because of sprawl that made inner-ring areas like Northland poorer and more accessible.

The region’s wealth moved steadily along a northwest corridor and by 1970 — the earliest year for which data comparable to modern-day numbers is available — Northland was already at the trailing edge of the sprawl. Census data show many of the region’s wealthiest tracts still within a few miles of the mall, but so is the intense poverty of the increasingly isolated central city.

Fast-forward to 2013, the latest year for the same data, and Northland is in a sea of lower socioeconomic census tracts; the wealthiest parts of the region have moved much farther away.

The area within a mile of Northland saw its average family income drop from $89,000 in 1970, in today's dollars, to just $39,000 in 2013.

Even within 5 miles of the mall, average family income dropped from $84,000 to $64,000.

Simultaneously, and unsurprising because of racist policy-making, like the federal housing act and the whites-only GI Bill, the black population around Northland skyrocketed as income levels fell.

In 1970, the black population within 5 miles of Northland was about 0.5%; by 2010, it was at least 90%.

In 40 years’ time, Northland’s immediate environs went from overwhelmingly white and middle-class to overwhelmingly African American and much lower-class.

And it's impossible to reflect on Northland's decline and fall without acknowledging that cultural and economic change played a role, or that those changes spill out across this region.

The movement of wealth away from Detroit plays out in the dramatic inability of those left behind to get ahead.

Think of the jobs that went away when Northland declined, and then closed. As jobs move farther into the exurbs, they become less accessible to the poor, mostly black population left behind, mostly in the city.

Think of the story of James Robertson, the so-called “walking man” profiled in the Free Press earlier this year.

His struggle to find living-wage work had him walking 20 miles a day, past areas like Northland, to the deepest regions of the suburbs.

There are consequences for inner-ring suburbs like Southfield, where lawmakers have taken swift action to tear it down and prepare the site for some future, any future. The city will spend millions acquiring the vacant mall, razing it and preparing the site for a new developer.

But those prospects are dimmed by the plunging demographics in the area, all across the inner ring of suburbs. Think of the wasted infrastructure that sits beneath those areas, and the trouble raising money to maintain or even decommission it. Think of the difficulty of providing economic opportunity for residents of those areas.

Southeast Michigan has long been loath to confront any of those dynamics. So when a place like Northland closes, it fails to inspire much conversation about the larger context.

It has been fascinating to watch southeast Michigan string together the final lines of Northland's obituary. The mall was a cultural touchstone for so many Detroiters and suburbanites — a place that evolved over many lifetimes and finally, mercifully, gave in.

But the story about the demise of Northland Mall is about us, as a region.

Will we ever come to terms with the self-inflicted wounds that split us apart, and hold us back?

Contact Stephen Henderson: shenderson600@freepress.com

Correction: An earlier version of this article included maps that mislabeled Southfield Rd.