These are the Largest Cities in Michigan Without Any Suburbs
It's an interesting thought - what's the largest city in Michigan without any suburbs. To answer the question you have to define what a suburb is. For this survey we'll define a suburb as an incorporated city or village adjacent to a larger city. Townships won't count for this list.
The idea was based on a thread from Reddit asking about the largest US cities without suburbs. No cities from Michigan made that discussion - and there wasn't really much of a consensus.
It may lead to some interesting debate, but here's how we score it.
Looking at the largest cities in Michigan, Detroit certainly has counties worth of suburbs. Grand Rapids has Grandville, Walker, Kentwood and Wyoming.
Lansing may be debatable. Is East Lansing a suburb of Lansing? We'll say yes and not count Lansing.
Same for Ann Arbor. While you may be tempted to not count Ypsi, you would have to count the village of Barton Hills, so A2 is out.
Next largest is Flint. With Grand Blanc, Burton and Mount Morris, that's a nada.
Kalamazoo has Parchment and Portage. Some Portagers may say Kalamazoo is a suburb of Portage - but that's another article.
Next on the list of most populated Michigan cities are Battle Creek (Springfield) and Saginaw (Zilwaukee) until we get to the largest Michigan city without a suburb - Midland. There is no other city or village that would be considered a suburb of Midland.
READ MORE: You'll Never Guess Michigan's 10 Largest Cities in 1850
Getting to ever smaller cities, they have at least one suburb: Muskegon (North Muskegon, Muskegon Heights, Norton Shores, Roosevelt Park), Holland (Zeeland), Bay City (Essexville) and then comes the next largest city without a suburb, Jackson.
Next on the list is Port Huron which has a suburb of Marysville. Following Port Huron are the next five cities that count on the lack of suburbs list, Mount Pleasant, Adrian, Marquette, Monroe and Traverse City.
And that's where we'll cut the list as we've gotten down to cities like Owosso and Niles - no offense to those cities, but they're not ones you'd think of having suburbs in the first place.
So these are the largest cities in Michigan without a suburb with 2020 Census population data:
Midland 42,547
Jackson 31,309
Mount Pleasant 21,688
Adrian 20,645
Marquette 20,629
Monroe 20,462
Traverse City 15,678
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