User:Higley1000

The Higley 1000 website (http://Higley1000.com), investigates racial integration in America’s wealthiest neighborhoods and suburbs. The American dream includes living in the best of neighborhoods that provide status and luxury as well as access to the finest schools (both private and public), shopping, recreational facilities, and well patrolled safety.

Defining neighborhoods is a challenge and it is my hope that the blog feature of my site will open the door for those of you that will help me make sense of this vast country of ours. I have personally investigated over 3,000 places over the last 3 years and I hope that the list will be constantly refined to identify America’s wealthiest places. If you think I’ve missed a wonderful neighborhood… drop me a line on my blog!

The data is based on the 2000 Census and I am looking forward to updating the site when the 2010 Census race and income statistics are published (2012-3).

I call this list the Higley 1000 as I have had to make an endless number of judgments as to what is included in a neighborhood and what is left out. In general I have chosen only the wealthiest Block Groups and Census Tracts of any particular place. This methodology inevitably favors small, homogeneous suburban places over more complex urban places. I have attempted to remedy this situation by analyzing the top 50 urban places. I researched urban neighborhoods at a much larger scale (for the most part at the tract level). Please see the Methodology section for further information. To see this list, click on “High Income Urban Neighborhoods” in the side-bar. In spite of my best efforts with the internet and my extensive personal collection of maps, there are at least 100 neighborhoods where I have been unable to come up with the locally used name for various sub-divisions and neighborhoods. As this web site becomes better known, I hope I will be able to find some help from the public in identifying every place as accurately as possible. The places that I could use some help with are listed on this page as “Places that Bear Further Study”.

Please note that I’ve tried to keep the name of any individual Census Block Group to two hyphenated names to avoid too many confusing names. In general I have used the names of the largest sub-divisions or neighborhoods when a Block Group has a large number of named places within its borders.

This web site has been set up so that every time I update the Higley 1000 list with new finds, all of the tables auto-magically update. For that I can thank my Grand Master Web Svengali, Scott Cammack (http://makingmirth.com).

Be sure to check out “Neighborhood Area by Metro Area” to find out how your local wealthy neighborhoods compare to the rest of the country!

Enjoy!

Stephen R. Higley Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Urban Geography

University of Montevallo

Montevallo, Alabama 35115