by Laura Conaway

Income in cities and suburbs.
Bill Lucy/Discovering Urbanism

In many places, the cities are becoming wealthier than their surrounding suburbs.

God bless the city of Detroit (and with it, Philadelphia). Discovering Urbanism mines the Census Bureau's American Community Survey for a look at how income in several cities compares to income in those cities' suburbs.

As you can see from the chart by suburban scholar Bill Lucy, wealth has been shifting into cities — except in Philadelphia and Detroit. The picture for Michigan is painful overall, of course — it's one of five states that saw personal income fall in 2008.