Ren Farley

Reynolds Farley, The Detroit News: Michigan's closest international border is Canada, which doesn't send a lot of immigrants to the U.S. each year, said Reynolds Farley, research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan's Population Studies...

Dominique Adams-Santos, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, and PhD candidate Kayonne Christy contributed a chapter, "Narratives in Context: Locating Racism and Sexism in Black Women's Health Experiences," to The Routledge Companion to...

The Detroit News: "We have a rather elderly population here in Michigan," said Reynolds Farley, research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. "We've been losing people to other states for almost 20 years, and...

Census data shows that more Detroiters own homes than are renting. But, Ren Farley, lecturer at the Ford School, says that data could be flawed due to an undercount in Detroit.  “(Hurricane) Katrina didn’t come through Detroit,” Farley said....

The results of the 2020 Census have generated debate across the country, but perhaps nowhere as intensely as in Detroit. Michigan’s largest city, which has an overwhelming majority of African American and Hispanic residents combined of 85%, may have...

Economic and social impact of religious festivals In Mexico, “patron saint day” festivals are often local public holidays and involve substantial financial expenditures by households and governments. Festival dates vary greatly across localities:...

Last week, the city of Detroit filed a claim with the Census Bureau, arguing its residents were undercounted in 2020. Ford School lecturer Reynolds Farley discussed the undercount.  “This census was deficient in Detroit,” he said. “They didn’t...

The COVID-19 pandemic made big cities less attractive, with no events to attend or restaurants to sample. Reynolds Farley, a research scientist at the Population Studies Center, discussed the trend. “Cities growing and declining, that’s strongly...

For the first time since 1900, Michigan's death rate is higher than its birth rate. This could impact everything from the economy to political power to school districts.  "Having a smaller population is not inherently bad, but adjusting to that...

Working remotely has its perks At Comerica Park, Detroit News photographer Robin Buckson spotted sociologist and Detroit historian Ren Farley keeping score as the Tigers beat the Kansas City Royals. “I teach the course on Detroit so I have to...

Javed Ali has appeared recently in outlets such as 60 Minutes, ABC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, NPR’s Morning Edition, and the Los Angeles Times. He’ll become an associate professor of practice at the Ford School this...

The U.S. Census Bureau announced Michigan will drop from 14 congressional seats to 13 due to sluggish population growth since the last count in 2010. “It does reduce the state’s influence and ability to get things done; not by a lot, but a little...

An article in Bridge Detroit on July 9 looked at suburbanites engaging with the history and policies of their communities in the wake of Black Lives Matters demonstrations. Some of these suburbs were developed as anti-Black "sundown towns". Ford...

Javed Ali wrote or co-authored multiple op-eds published by The Hill. He also appeared as a frequent commentator on MSNBC. Topics ranged from U.S. national security to crises in the Middle East. John Ayanian, inaugural Director of U-M’s Institute...

Large cities are cast as meccas for young professionals, with their migration seen as a cultural inevitability. But with ever-increasing living costs and overcrowding, as well as technological advances that make proximity less of a necessity for...

In August, John Z. Ayanian published a policy–focused article with colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “ Mitigating the risks of Medicaid work requirements.” Michael S. Barr teamed up with Howell E. Jackson and Margaret E....

What’s the future for Rust Belt cities? Claire Ballentine of Bloomberg News looks at revitalization projects attempting to answer this question in her April 8, 2019, piece titled “Rust Belt Turns to Munis to Breathe Life Into Old Factories,” talking...

Although we may not notice in a bustling town like Ann Arbor, we are amidst a crisis—the number of births in the state of Michigan has reached its lowest point since World War II. In the last three decades, births have fallen from 153,000 in 1990 to...

Reynolds Farley has contributed a chapter entitled “Detroit: The emergence, decline and possible revitalization of a great city” for the August 2017 book A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change: Partnering to Improve Life Outcomes for...

Reynolds Farley penned a chapter entitled, "Detroit in bankruptcy: What are the lessons to be learned?" for the 2017 volume Why Detroit Matters: Decline, Renewal, and Hope in a Divided City, edited by Brian Doucet. Introduction Detroit’s city...

In a February 5 guest column for Bridge Magazine, a publication of The Center for Michigan, Reynolds Farley discusses Michigan’s controversial emergency management system and proposes solutions to help underfunded localities. Farley's...

The fall 2015 issue of State & Hill magazine was mailed to alumni and friends of the Ford School on November 18, 2015. This edition of the magazine, titled “Motor City Remix,” highlighted stories about some of the work Ford School faculty,...

As the plane hummed on the runway at Detroit Metro Airport, 17 anxious teenagers fidgeted in their seats, peering through the drawn window shades. “Are we in the air yet?” It was the third time Leah Ouellet (AB ‘13) had heard the same...

It’s Saturday at 8:30 a.m. when Ren Farley takes a right onto State Street and pulls to the meter in his red Ford Mustang. For the past eight years, he’s been teaching a policy course at the Ford School on “The History and Future of Detroit.” Today,...