07-03-2025
Suburbs trying to look less suburban by building downtowns
Downtown Battle Creek | Photo by Anna Gustafson
On a warm day in 1968 a young Bob Seger rocked a crowd of 20,000 in front of a Hudson's department store, a highlight of the grand opening ceremonies for the sprawling Oakland Mall in Troy.
Troy was a booming, relatively new Oakland County suburb that had been incorporated as a city just 13 years before the 1.5 million-square-foot 'super-regional' mall opened. Its motto was 'The City of Tomorrow . . . Today.'
But today, the city of tomorrow is trying to look a bit more like the city of yesterday. Troy, Warren and Livonia are among numerous cookie-cutter suburbs across the country trying to build downtowns from scratch.
The appeal of suburbs was long centered on the availability of land for spacious homes with large yards and huge shopping malls with plenty of parking. Newly built freeways made it easy for suburbanites to commute to jobs in the city.
Racial tensions resulted in massive white flight from Detroit and other large cities. About 120,000 white people fled Detroit for the suburbs in just the first two years after the 1967 riots, according to the Detroit Historical Society.
But today, the suburbs have lost much of their retail mojo. The Hudson's (now Macy's) store Bob Seger played in front of, is closing this month. Oakland and many other malls are struggling to survive. About 1,800 U.S. malls have closed since the 1980s. Only about 700 are left.
Online shopping has crippled brick-and-mortar retail, especially since the Covid pandemic. And many younger residents want to live in places with a more urban vibe.
'The whole way people acquire stuff is changing significantly,' Robin Boyle, a retired Wayne State University urban planning professor, told me. 'They want to go somewhere to eat and drink and have some fun. That's what's driving this.'
Officials in Livonia cite the need for new, younger residents at the heart of plans to build a downtown, formally known as a city center, on 27 acres of property that is currently occupied by city offices.
Livonia, which had a population of nearly 101,000 in 1990, has lost almost 9,000 residents in the past 35 years.
The city's proposal calls for a mixed-use, open-air development containing retail shops, restaurants and housing. The center would feature a network of sidewalks and bike paths that would connect to the larger community.
Mayor Maureen Bosnan told the Detroit News 'that if we do this right, this is the way to make sure that Livonia is the place that our kids want to come home to.' She said a downtown is 'a missing piece' in the city.
Warren, a Macomb County suburb that's also the state's third-largest city, is trying for a second time to create a downtown from scratch. It's working on resurrecting most of a $170 million plan that called for housing, retail and a hotel adjacent to Warren's city hall and library. That development proposal died in 2022 when the Warren City Council voted against financial support for the project.
Troy has built an expansive city center featuring luxury apartments, and mostly chain retail stores, restaurants and hotels at the busy intersection of Big Beaver Road and I-75.
Boyle, a longtime member of the Birmingham planning commission, said one problem with these new city centers is that they lack the diversity and authenticity of long-established downtowns.
'Most of the successful ones are where there are old buildings,' he said.
These include older suburbs such as Royal Oak, Ferndale and Clawson that have revitalized walkable downtowns where the tenants are 'overwhelmingly food and drinking establishments.'
Robert Gibbs, a Birmingham-based planner who has designed city centers around the country, said about 75% of them either underperform financially or fail.
The successful ones usually have strong anchor stores, including grocery stores and convenient parking, but also mimic the feel of a traditional downtown, he said.
One example is the Village of Rochester Hills, a Gibbs-designed shopping center that's anchored by an upscale Von Maur department store and a Whole Foods grocery. Most of the retail and restaurants in the Village are national brands. But it also has city-like streets and sidewalks.
Major retailers are attracted to such centers, which also provide healthy tax revenues to local governments, Gibbs said.
Many of these centers are in what Gibbs calls 'edge cities,' such as Troy, that are located in the outer ring of metro areas.
Overall, the suburbs are still growing, particularly those farthest away from urban cores. Experts say that may be attributable to lower housing costs in those areas and more people working from home since the Covid pandemic.
But some bedroom communities are trying to attract younger residents who want something more than look-alike housing and big-box retailers. Building downtowns is one strategy.
'Edge cities are just plain boring,' Gibbs said.
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