Southeast Michigan, also called southeastern Michigan, is a region in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan that is home to a majority of the state's businesses and industries as well as slightly over half of the state's population, most of whom are concentrated in

Metro Detroit The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. State of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and its surrounding area. There are varied definitions of the area, including the ...

Geography

It is bordered in the northeast by Lake St. Clair, to the south-east

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

, and the Detroit River which connects these two lakes.

Principal cities

*Detroit, the state's largest city (and the nation's eighteenth-largest) and the county seat of Wayne County. * Mount Clemens, the county seat of Macomb County. * Pontiac, the county seat of Oakland County.

Other important cities within the core counties of Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

Dearborn Dearborn may refer to: People * Dearborn (surname) ** Henry Dearborn (1751–1829), U.S. Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson, Senior Officer of the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 Places in the United States Forts * Fort Dearborn, ...

Livonia Livonia ( liv, Līvõmō, et, Liivimaa, fi, Liivinmaa, German and Scandinavian languages: ', archaic German: ''Liefland'', nl, Lijfland, Latvian and lt, Livonija, pl, Inflanty, archaic English: ''Livland'', ''Liwlandia''; russian: Ли ...

* Novi *

Romulus Romulus () was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of these ...

, home to Detroit Metro Airport *

Royal Oak The Royal Oak is the English oak tree within which the future King Charles II of England hid to escape the Roundheads following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The tree was in Boscobel Wood, which was part of the park of Boscobel House ...

* Southfield * Sterling Heights, the fourth-largest city (by population) in Michigan. *

Troy Troy ( el, Τροία and Latin: Troia, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ''Truwiša'') or Ilion ( el, Ίλιον and Latin: Ilium, Hittite: 𒃾𒇻𒊭 ''Wiluša'') was an ancient city located at Hisarlik in present-day Turkey, south-west of Çan ...

* Warren, third-largest city (by population) in Michigan, location of General Motors Technical Center, the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), the National Automotive Center (NAC). *

West Bloomfield Township West Bloomfield Township, officially the Charter Township of West Bloomfield, is a charter township in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan, within the Detroit metropolitan area. It is one of the most expensive places to live in Oakland ...

Outlying cities

Some cities are considered within southeast Michigan, while also being a part of another region or metropolitan area. The following cities tend to identify themselves separately from southeast Michigan and are isolated from the core counties of Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne. * Adrian, county seat of Lenawee County and home of Adrian College, Siena Heights University. * Ann Arbor, county seat of Washtenaw County and home of the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

's main campus. * Hillsdale, county seat of Hillsdale County located between the southeast and southwest corners of the state. *

Howell Howell may refer to: Places In the United Kingdom * Howell, Lincolnshire, England In the United States * Howell, Georgia *Howell, Evansville, a neighborhood of Evansville, Indiana * Howell, Michigan * Howell, Missouri * Howell, Utah * Howel ...

, county seat of Livingston County located between Metro Detroit and the Greater Lansing areas. * Jackson, county seat of Jackson County also considered to be a part of Greater Lansing. * Monroe, county seat of Monroe County. *

Port Huron Port Huron is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of St. Clair County. The population was 30,184 at the 2010 census. The city is adjacent to Port Huron Township but is administered separately. Located along the St. Clair ...

, county seat of St. Clair County, also considered to be part of the Thumb. *

Saline Saline may refer to: * Saline (medicine), a liquid with salt content to match the human body * Saline water, non-medicinal salt water * Saline, a historical term (especially US) for a salt works or saltern Places * Saline, Calvados, a commune in ...

, a community in Washtenaw County. * Ypsilanti, a community in Washtenaw County, and home to Eastern Michigan University's main campus.

Metropolitan area

With 4,488,335 people in 2010,

was the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the United States, while Ann Arbor's metropolitan area ranked 141st with 341,847. Metropolitan areas of southeast Michigan, and parts of the Thumb and Flint/Tri-Cities, are grouped together by the U.S. Census Bureau with Detroit-Warren-Livonia MSA in a wider nine-county region designated the Detroit–Ann Arbor–Flint

Combined Statistical Area Combined statistical area (CSA) is a United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) term for a combination of adjacent metropolitan (MSA) and micropolitan statistical areas (µSA) across the 50 US states and the territory of Puerto Ric ...

(CSA) with a population of 5,428,000.

Combined Statistical Area

* Genesee County *

Lapeer County Lapeer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 88,619. The county seat is Lapeer. The county was created on September 18, 1822, and was fully organized on February 2, 1835. The ...

* Lenawee County (removed from the CSA in 2001 but relisted in 2013) * Livingston County* * Macomb County* * Monroe County* * Oakland County* * Saint Clair County* * Washtenaw County* * Wayne County* Denotes member counties of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG)

Economy

The main economic activity is manufacturing cars. Major manufacturing cities are Warren, Sterling Heights,

(Henry Ford's childhood home) and Detroit, also called "Motor City" or "Motown". Other economic activities include banking and other service industries. Most people in Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne Counties live in urban areas. In the recent years,

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growt ...

has affected the areas of

Canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...

Commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, natio ...

, Chesterfield, and

Clinton Clinton is an English toponymic surname, indicating one's ancestors came from English places called Glympton or Glinton.Hanks, P. & Hodges, F. ''A Dictionary of Surnames''. Oxford University Press, 1988 Clinton has frequently been used as a given ...

townships. The metropolitan area is also home to some of the highest ranked hospitals and medical centers, Such as the Detroit Medical Center(DMC), Henry Ford Hospital, Beaumont Hospital, and the

hospital in Ann Arbor. SEMCOG Commuter Rail is a proposed regional rail link between Ann Arbor and Detroit. The Detroit Metro Airport is the busiest in the area with the opening of the McNamara terminal and the now completed North Terminal. The airport is located in

. Manufacturing and service industries have replaced agriculture for the most part. In rural areas of Saint Clair County, Monroe, and Livingston Counties still grow crops such as

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn ( North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. ...

, sugar beets,

soy beans The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu and ...

, other types of beans, and fruits. Romeo and northern Macomb County is well known for its apple and peach orchards.

Media

Radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...

Most major Detroit radio stations, such as

WJR WJR (760 AM) is a commercial radio station in Detroit, Michigan, owned by Cumulus Media, with a news/talk format. Most of WJR's broadcast studios, along with its newsroom and offices, are in the Fisher Building in Detroit's New Center area. A ...

and WWJ, can be heard in most or all of southeastern Michigan. Port Huron, Howell, Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, Adrian, and Monroe are also served by their own locally-originating stations.

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from othe ...

is broadcast locally from Ann Arbor on Michigan Radio WUOM 91.7 FM and from Detroit on

WDET-FM WDET-FM (101.9 MHz) is a public radio station in Detroit, Michigan. Broadcasting from Wayne State University in the city's Cass Corridor neighborhood, about a mile south of the New Center neighborhood, WDET broadcasts original programming an ...

101.9 FM.

Television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

Major television stations include: WJBK Fox 2 Detroit (

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelv ...

), WXYZ Channel 7 ( ABC), WDIV Local 4 ( NBC), WWJ-TV CBS 62 ( CBS) and WKBD CW 50 ( CW). Newspaper Daily editions of the ''

Detroit Free Press The ''Detroit Free Press'' is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the ''Sunday Free Press''. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primari ...

'' and ''

The Detroit News ''The Detroit News'' is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival '' Detroit Free Press'' building. ''The News'' absorbed the '' Detroit Tribune'' on Febru ...

'' are available throughout the area.

External links

Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, Bibliography on Michigan (arranged by counties and regions)

Info Michigan, detailed information on 630 cities

Michigan Department of Natural Resources website, harbors, hunting, resources and more.

Michigan's Official Economic Development and Travel Site, including interactive map, information on attractions, museums, etc.

Southeast Michigan Council of Governments
{{Michigan Regions of Michigan