Assessing Gentrification in Michigan’s Coastal Communities

Blue gentrification — the displacement of long-term residents from communities near lakes, rivers, and coastlines by amenity-seeking in-migration — is an increasingly visible but poorly understood challenge across the Great Lakes region. Michigan, with more coastline than any other contiguous state, presents a particularly important context: its shoreline communities have experienced significant waterfront investment, including through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), alongside rapid increases in property values, vacation rental activity, and demographic change.

This project is the first systematic effort to map and assess blue gentrification across Michigan’s Great Lakes coastline, covering 46 municipalities over the period 2006–2020. Using panel regression and bivariate Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) clustering applied to household-level data on home value, wealth, income, length of residence, and ownership status, the project identifies where waterfront proximity is most strongly associated with gentrification indicators. Vacation rental data from AirDNA provides a complementary lens on tourism-driven displacement dynamics. A central research question is whether GLRI-funded waterfront revitalization projects have contributed to gentrification — whether environmental restoration, paradoxically, has fueled the displacement of the very communities it was designed to benefit.

A second phase conducts fieldwork in four case study communities selected based on hotspot results, combining resident surveys, semi-structured interviews with local decision-makers, and physical neighborhood audits. Outputs are designed to directly inform policy and practice: an interactive MI Blue Gentrification Hotspot Tool (hosted via ArcGIS StoryMaps) makes gentrification patterns publicly explorable for planners and policymakers, while a policy brief and Sea Grant extension events bring findings to local officials and coastal residents across the state. Jake contributed to this project as a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, supporting spatial analysis, supervising undergraduate researchers, and co-authoring dissemination materials.