Northview Heights

Eight to ten miles up Plainfield Avenue from downtown Grand Rapids, the land starts to rise and go wooded, and the mailing city stays "Grand Rapids" even as the map slips north into Plainfield and Grand Rapids townships. Locals don't use those township lines to place themselves — they say Northview, after the school district and the census community of the same name that most homes here sit inside. (The "Heights" on this page is our label for the elevated, ravine-cut central stretch of that area; you won't find it on a plat or a street sign, but the rolling, tree-covered terrain earns it.) There's no single civic boundary out here. People orient instead by three things: the Northview Public Schools footprint, the Plainfield Avenue corridor to the west, and the East Beltline and Knapp's Corner off to the east and south.