Tracking Los Angeles' Racial Geography, 1990 - 2010

Eric Fischer earned widespread recognition in 2010 for assembling census data into demographic maps in "Race and Ethnicity (2000)", a project as artistic as it is cartographic. Now, with 2010 Census data in hand, Fischer zooms in to give us a closer look at how Los Angeles has changed in the last twenty years.

In particular, Wilson points to the explosion of the Asian population in Monterey Park, "the first mainland American city with an Asian majority." He also points to the exodus of blacks out of Compton, "a calling card for an entire movement of black hip-hop artists in the '90s," supplanted by an influx of Latinos.

"If there's one thing that's particularly depressing about this map," Wilson opines, "it's not really found in a story of which race ends up where, but in the fact that, over 20 years of so-called progress, these segregated pockets aren't melding. Rather, they're shifting in color."