There’s no such thing as the suburbs,” declares Myron Orfield, a former Minnesota state legislator who’s gained national attention for his research on patterns of decline and prosperity in America’s metropolitan areas. “Suburbs are not all alike anymore.”

Unfurling a map of the Detroit region splashed with bright reds and blues, he zeroes in on a few towns south of the city: Ecorse, River Rouge, Inkster. “These places are devastated. Boarded-up strip malls. Abandoned houses. Potholes in the streets big enough for kids to play in.” Then moving his finger across the map north to Bloomfield Hills, he says, “This is what we think of when we hear suburbs”: big houses, wide lawns, golf courses, shiny malls and office parks.

But less than 10 percent of all suburbanites call this kind of affluent community home, according to Orfield’s research. Most of them live in places facing some of the same economic, social, environmental, and racial challenges cities face. And this is true not just in struggling metropolitan regions like Detroit, but across the country. From New Rochelle (once famous as Rob and Laura Petrie’s suburban New York home on The Dick Van Dyke Show, but now increasingly poor and Latino) to Compton (the struggling Los Angeles suburb immortalized by gangsta rap pioneers NWA in their album Straight Outta Compton), it’s clear that urban decline can no longer be confined within the boundaries of central cities.

In the Chicago area, which has seen a significant upswing in many city neighborhoods and booming prosperity in its north and northwest suburbs, 59 municipalities had a lower per-capita tax base than the city in a 1999 study—a good measure that poverty is taking root in the lawns of suburbia. Orfield cites a visit a few years back to Harvey, a largely black community southwest of the city, as what really convinced him that some suburbs are in just as much trouble as inner cities. “The place was destitute,” he remembers. “The city government had been forced to move into an abandoned bank building. The mayor sat behind bullet-proof glass.

“Many suburbs are actually much more fragile than center cities,” Orfield adds. “When they start to go, they go fast. You always have certain people who want to live in the city: young people, gays and lesbians, and artistic types, as well as many upper-middle-class people with an affection for urban living and old architecture. There’s an aesthetic appeal to older, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. This is why you saw a rebound in a lot of cities during the 1990s.