How Urban Diversity Equals Neighborhood Segregation

Cities often consider diversity to be among their great assets. And American cities have diversity in spades. But as anyone who's ever visited Watts, Hyde Park, Bel Air, or the Upper West Side knows, the experience of diversity often does not match up with the statistics on diversity. 

Celebrity statistician Nate Silver has taken this notion and analyzed the data not just for cities' overall diversity—which is highest in Jersey City, N.J., Oakland, Calif., and Sacramento, Calif. and lowest in Laredo, Tex., Hialeah, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz.—but also for cities' neighborhood diversity. Comparing the two, Silver concludes that some of America's most diverse cities are actually some of the most segregated. 

"A few cities actually get pretty close to this ideal of complete diversity. Oakland, California, is not far from being evenly divided between whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians; its citywide diversity index is 75 percent. New York’s is 73 percent. And Chicago’s is 70 percent. At the low end of the scale are extremely white cities like Lincoln and Scottsdale, Arizona. There’s also extremely black cities like Detroit, and extremely Hispanic cities like Laredo, Texas. Laredo, which is almost entirely Hispanic, has a citywide diversity index of just 8 percent."

"You can have a diverse city, but not diverse neighborhoods. Whereas Chicago’s citywide diversity index is 70 percent, seventh best out of the 100 most populous U.S. cities, its neighborhood diversity index is just 36 percent, which ranks 82nd. New York also has a big gap. Its citywide diversity index is 73 percent, fourth highest in the country, but its neighborhood diversity index is 47 percent, which ranks 49th."

"The integration-segregation index is determined by how far above or below a city is from the regression line. Cities below the line are especially segregated. Chicago, which has a -19 score, is the most segregated city in the country. It’s followed by Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Washington and Baltimore."