[5] Southfield is notable as the home of multiple business districts, including the Southfield City Centre (an edge city which contains the tallest building in Detroit's suburbs) and the area surrounding the former Northland Center shopping mall.

Southfield was surveyed in 1817 according to the plan by Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass.

[8] City Hall was built in 1964 as part of the new Civic Center complex, which also became home to Southfield's police headquarters.

The Civic Center was expanded in 1971 to include a sports arena with swimming pool.

Several internationally recognized corporations have major offices and headquarters in Southfield, including Veoneer, Huf Hülsbeck and Fürst, Denso, Peterson Spring, Federal-Mogul, Lear, R.L.

[13] Northland Center, one of the nation's first shopping malls, opened in Southfield in 1954 and closed in 2015.

[14] Southfield is home to over 780 acres (3.2 km2) of parkland and a nationally recognized public school district.[who?]

Southfield is home to a large number of notable buildings in the Mid-century modern style of architecture.

Prominent in Southfield is Southfield City Centre, a mixed-use area consisting of a major business center, private university, and residential neighborhoods, near the intersection of Interstate 696 (I-696, Walter P. Reuther Freeway) and the M-10 (Lodge Freeway).

Southfield City Centre was created in 1992 as a special assessment district, and was originally planned to improve pedestrian amenities and facilitate economic development.

The city is bordered by Detroit and Redford Township to the south, Farmington Hills to the west, Franklin, Bingham Farms, and Beverly Hills to the north and Royal Oak, Berkley and Oak Park to the east.

The most common occupations for people in Southfield are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs.

A relatively large number of people living in Southfield work in office and administrative support (16.00%), sales jobs (10.93%), and management occupations (9.72%).

[25] As of 2011, many African Americans from Detroit were moving into Southfield and other suburbs of Oakland and Macomb counties.

Tensions have occurred between existing middle-class blacks in Southfield and incoming Detroiters.

[26] As of 2001 many Chaldo-Assyrians live in Southfield; they are descended from the ancient Nineveh region of the Assyrian homeland in North Iraq.

[28] Since the rapid suburbanization of the 1950s and 1960s, many Jewish Americans from Northwest Detroit (particularly the Dexter-Davison neighborhood) moved to Southfield and other inner-ring suburbs such as Oak Park and Huntington Woods.

Congregation Shaarey Zedek moved from Detroit to Southfield in 1962 to a modernist synagogue building designed by Percival Goodman.

It is also home to Farber Hebrew Day School – Yeshivat Akiva, a kosher grocery store, and many independent synagogues.

[38] Southfield A&T also competes in the Oakland Activities Association in the Red Division for high school sports, and has membership in the MHSAA.

[39] AGBU Alex and Marie Manoogian School is an Armenian charter in Southfield.

A transmitter for WDIV-TV is in the city; it is the only television station based in downtown Detroit.

[40][41] In addition to The Detroit News and Free Press, Detroit's two metropolitan daily newspapers, Southfield is served by the Southfield Eccentric, a suburban paper that reports on local and community events, which is published twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday.

The major thoroughfares in the city include the John C. Lodge Freeway (M-10), which is among the first urban to suburban highways constructed in the United States.

There are numerous ball fields, tennis and handball courts, picnic areas and shelters.

There are soccer fields, play lots and sand volleyball courts throughout the city.