Old suburbs can learn from Detroit igh-growth suburbs aren'tnew to Metro Detroit.
The city's first suburbs boomed in the 1920s, as industrialists built plants in the low-cost countryside of Highland Park, Hamtramck and Ecorse and developers built nearby subdivisions for auto workers and steel workers. The earliest suburbs peaked by 1950, as Lincoln Park, Hazel Park, Roseville and others offered more modern homes, better schools, cleaner air and greater separation from industry - much as the newer suburbs do now. We opened our first model in January of 1957 in Madison Heights and we were immediately successful. Then we started in Taylor Township and expanded throughout the metropolitan area. By the time we went public in 1961, we were building more than a thousand houses a year.