Article

The Most Ethnically Diverse Urban Places in the United States

Taylor & Francis
Urban Geography
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Abstract

Using 1980 U.S. census data, we ranked all urban places over 10,000 in population according to the relative ethnic diversity of their populations, as measured by the entropy index. This statistic reflects the relative heterogeneity of the population in the areal unit, the highest values occurring when all groups are present in equal proportions. The ethnic populations were identified in terms of two different sets or groupings. The first set contains five categories: white, black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian and Pacific Island people. The second set has 13 categories and includes specific Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups as well as two categories of whites based on region of ancestral origin in Europe. The results show that larger cities are usually highly diverse, but the most diverse urban places are found throughout the full range of population sues. The places that ranked highest in ethnic diversity are usually part of a metropolitan area, most commonly in the Los Angeles and the San Francisco areas. A number of places in the New York City-northern New Jersey area and others in south Florida, Texas, and Hawaii also ranked high. The most ethnically diverse places are highly varied in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, but army posts constitute a distinctive type. In contrast, the least diverse urban places tend to be small in size, suburban or nonmetropolitan, strongly white with very few minorities, and located in the Northeast and Midwest.

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... A city or neighbourhood may have small numbers of new migrants but relatively high indices of diversity (cf. Allen and Turner 1989). In terms of numbers of new migrants London still shows the highest degree of relative change, but significant trends are also to be found in the South East, West Midlands, East of England, North West, and Yorkshire and Humberside (Kyambi 2005). ...
... There have indeed been inquiries into how best to gauge diversity in ethnic terms, but also with respect to variables such as age, income and occupational types (e.g., Allen and Turner 1989) or how adequately to derive and evaluate measures of multi-group segregation (e.g., Reardon and Firebaugh 2002). The development of quantitative techniques for multivariate analysis surely have much to offer the study of super-diversity, particularly by way of the understanding the interaction of variables such as country of origin, ethnicity, language, immigration status (and its concomitant rights, benefits and restrictions), age, gender, education, occupation and locality. ...
... Hall and his associates (2016), who emphasize the variability in placelevel patterns of diversity change, nevertheless show that the steepest upward-sloping trajectories (toward greater diversity) have disproportionately involved metro places instead of micropolitan or rural ones. Population size, an alternative to the metro-nonmetro dichotomy, exhibits a consistent positive correlation with ethnoracial diversity (Allen and Turner 1989;Farrell 2005;Hall and Lee 2010;Lee et al. 2012). But it only taps a single dimension of the rural-urban continuum, and it tends to be used in analyses of subsets of communities (e.g., metro areas, suburbs, rural places). ...
... In particular, we are interested in the robustness of any 'effect' registered by position on the rural-urban continuum: does a place's RUC category independently predict diversity after controlling for more detailed characteristics of the place that its RUC category might be proxying? Three general types of place characteristics have been identified in prior diversity investigations (Allen and Turner 1989;Farrell 2005;Lee et al. 2012; Hall and Lee 2010; Sharp and Lee forthcoming). With respect to the context of reception provided by a place, location in the West or South (closer to Hispanic and Asian countries of origin) and a critical mass of foreign-born residents are related to higher diversity and more balanced racial-ethnic structures. ...
Article
Scholarship and popular opinion regard cities as more racially and ethnically diverse than rural communities. However, recent trends hint at the possibility of less distinctive diversity profiles on either side of the metro-nonmetro divide. To explore this, we compare the magnitude and structure of ethnoracial diversity in more than 27,000 census-defined places arrayed across ten different types of county contexts that spanned the rural-urban continuum in 2010. Even as average residents’ exposure to diversity steadily declines as contexts become more rural and remote, place-based (unweighted) results show an uneven pattern of diversity across most of the continuum. Multivariate analysis supports the unevenness scenario: when place characteristics are taken into account, many of the associations between type of context and diversity weaken to the point of nonsignificance. Taken together, these findings suggest a blurring of rural-urban boundaries with respect to community ethnoracial composition.
... St. Patrick-St. Vincent Catholic High School is a college-preparatory private high school with a student body of *500; it is located in Vallejo, California, which has been ranked among the top 100 most ethnically diverse U.S. cities (Allen & Turner, 1989). School-sponsored tuition scholarships have increased enrollment of low-income families and help the school serve a student body more reflective of the wider community ( Figure 1). ...
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... 321). According to Allen and Turner (1989), California, Texas, New York, and Florida rank highest in both racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. More than 40% of community college students are People of Color, including people who are native born and those who have emigrated to the United States. ...
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Community colleges in the United States have historically held a unique position within the system of higher education because of three characteristics. These characteristics include their doctrine of open access, their consistent affordability in comparison to other higher education options, and courses that are directly applicable to the workforce. However, over the years, contradictions have arisen that compromise the practice of these ideals. Focusing on three policy priorities, this analysis determines how effective community colleges are today in offering students an education that is accessible, applicable to the labor market, and affordable. The concluding points include predictions of what the future of community colleges looks like within the next twenty years.
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... A prominent family of these exploit the property that entropy is maximal when probabilities are evenly distributed, and zero when concentrated in a single location, and can, thus, be used for representing a measure of spatial concentration or dispersion [30]. Such an interpretation can yield numerous indices measuring such phenomena in urban systems as ethnic diversity [31], urban sprawl [32,33], segregation [34], diversity of urban land use [35], and the geographic distribution of species to infer biodiversity [36]. These applications are often coupled with GIS and remote sensing techniques to analyse real geographic data [37][38][39][40], as well as instance matching of similar points of interest through geo-location data [41]. ...
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Since its conception over 150 years ago, entropy has enlightened and confused scholars and students alike, from its origins in physics and beyond. More recently, it has been considered within the urban context in a rather eclectic range of applications. The entropy maximization approach, as applied by Alan Wilson and others from the 1960s, contrasts with considerations from the 1990s of the city as a thermodynamic dissipative system, in the tradition of Ilya Prigogine. By reviewing the relevant mathematical theory, we draw the distinction among three interrelated definitions of entropy, the thermodynamic, the figurative, and the information statistical. The applications of these definitions to urban systems within the literature are explored, and the conflation of the thermodynamic and figurative interpretations are disentangled. We close this paper with an outlook on future uses of entropy in urban systems analysis.
... The spatial assimilation and ethnic stratification perspectives have less to say regarding the correlates of community diversity. Previous research on community diversity (Allen and Turner 1989;Farrell 2005;Hwang and Murdock 1998;Lee et al. 2012Lee et al. , 2014Hall and Lee 2010) hints at a few community characteristics that should be conducive (or not) to nomajority status. One is scale: larger places and those in metropolitan settings have greater visibility and thus are able to attract more migrants than smaller or rural communities. ...
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The United States is experiencing a profound increase in racial and ethnic diversity, although its communities are experiencing the trend differently depending on their size and location. Using census data from 1980 to 2010, we focus on a subset of highly diverse local jurisdictions in which no ethnoracial group makes up more than half of the population. We track the prevalence, emergence, and characteristics of these no-majority places, finding that they are rapidly increasing in number and are home to substantial and growing shares of the Black, Latino, and Asian populations. Transitions in no-majority places varied considerably over time. Older cohorts of places that became no-majority decades ago moved toward Latino or Black majorities, whereas those in recent cohorts tended to persist as no-majority places. Most of these communities continued to diversify in the decades after first becoming no-majority and remain quite diverse today. However, the shift toward no-majority status was often accompanied by large White population declines.
... Less abstractly, these institutions are encouraged by law or organizational mandate to engage in affirmative recruiting. Thus, counties that contain seats of government, have a college or university presence, or host military installations should be relatively diverse irrespective of the racial-ethnic composition of neighboring counties (Allen and Turner 1989;Lee et al. 2012). ...
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Although increasing racial and ethnic diversity is a demographic trend with society-wide implications, it has advanced farther in some parts of the United States than others. Our research seeks to understand this unevenness at the local level. Drawing on 1980–2010 census data, we use an innovative spatial analytic approach to examine the spread or diffusion of diversity across counties in the 48 contiguous states. Three perspectives—locational persistence, spatial assimilation, and institutional hub—offer different expectations about the nature of the diffusion process. The perspectives are evaluated by mapping changes in the magnitude and structure of diversity and by tracing county transitions between types of diversity clusters. We document considerable stability in diversity patterns over a 30-year period, consistent with the logic of locational persistence. But support is also found for the spatial assimilation and institutional hub models in the form of cluster-type transitions that reflect contagious diffusion and hierarchical diffusion, respectively.
... Despite their value as meaningful communities, places have attracted only modest interest from diversity scholars. Cross-sectional evidence suggests that the magnitude of diversity is positively related to several place characteristics, including population size, metropolitan status, a military or government presence, manufacturing and agricultural employment, housing affordability, and location in a coastal or southern border state (Allen & Turner 1989;Lee et al. 2012;Price & Singer 2008). Most critical from our standpoint, however, are the broad strokes with which temporal changes in place diversity have been painted. ...
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The ethnoracial makeup of the U.S. population has undergone transformative change during recent decades, with the non-Hispanic white share of the population shrinking while the minority shares expand. Yet this trend toward greater racial diversity is not universal throughout the nation. Here we propose a framework of segmented change, which incorporates both spatial assimilation and ethnic stratification theories, to better understand variation in patterns of diversification across American communities. Our research applies growth mixture models to decennial census data on places for the 1980-2010 period, finding that trajectories of ethnoracial diversity are much more uneven than popularly claimed. Moreover, types of diversity change are stratified by initial racial composition. While places with mostly-white populations in 1980 underwent extensive diversification, places with larger shares of Hispanics and (especially) blacks in 1980 exhibited less uniform movement toward diversity and were more likely to remain racially homogeneous. Analysis of the underlying group-specific pathways of change indicates that the diversification of white communities was driven largely by Hispanic growth; when areas with a black presence did diversify, it occurred via contracting white populations. These racially conditioned and locally variable patterns emphasize the segmented nature of diversity change in American society.
... However, Anchorage does have many of the hallmarks of diversity identified in the academic literature. 5 One of these is simple geography. Many Western coastal cities are highly diverse due in part to their proximity to Asia and Latin America and to their attractiveness to an array of domestic movers from other regions of the United States. ...
... Los Angeles County is considered as one of the most ethnically diverse places in the US (Allen and Turner, 1989), as well as the most populous county in the nation in terms of total population, and also the number of Chinese residents. As in many other cities, LA' s Chinese population was historically centred in a downtown Chinatown, which can be traced back to the last century. ...
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This innovative work provides a new model for the analysis of ethnic and racial settlement patterns in the United States and Canada. Ethnoburbs-suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas-are multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and often multinational communities in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration but does not necessarily constitute a majority. Wei Li documents the processes that have evolved with the spatial transformation of the Chinese American community of Los Angeles and that have converted the San Gabriel Valley into ethnoburbs in the latter half of the twentieth century, and she examines the opportunities and challenges that occurred as a result of these changes. Traditional ethnic and immigrant settlements customarily take the form of either ghettos or enclaves. Thus the majority of scholarly publications and mass media covering the San Gabriel Valley has described it as a Chinatown located in Los Angeles' suburbs. Li offers a completely different approach to understanding and analyzing this fascinating place. By conducting interviews with residents, a comparative spatial examination of census data and other statistical sources, and fieldwork-coupled with her own holistic view of the area-Li gives readers an effective and fine-tuned socio-spatial analysis of the evolution of a new type of racially defined place. The San Gabriel Valley tells a unique story, but its evolution also speaks to those experiencing a similar type of ethnic and racial conurbation. In sum, Li sheds light on processes that are shaping other present (and future) ethnically and racially diverse communities. The concept of the ethnoburb has redefined the way geographers and other scholars think about ethnic space, place, and process. This book will contribute significantly to both theoretical and empirical studies of immigration by presenting a more intensive and thorough "take" on arguments about spatial and social processes in urban and suburban America.
... 7 The place controls include population size (logged), metropolitan status, the ratio of mean minority family income to mean white family income, the percentage of renter-occupied housing units, and a dichotomous indicator of specialization in government, military, or higher education functions. All of these controls are measured in 1980 with census SF1 or SF3 data and have proven useful in previous studies that attempt to account for diversity variation across communities (Allen & Turner 1989;Farrell 2005;Hall & Lee 2010;Lee et al. 2012Lee et al. , 2014. ...
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Although increasing diversity at the national scale is a well-documented trend, substantial variation in patterns of ethnoracial change occurs across American communities. Our research considers one theoretically implied path: that some communities are ‘bucking the trend,’ becoming more homogeneous over time. Using 1980 through 2010 decennial census data, we calculate panethnic (five-group) entropy index scores to measure the magnitude of diversity for nearly 11,000 census-defined places. Our results indicate that while certain places reach their diversity peak in 1980 or 1990, they are few in number. Moreover, they experience a variety of post-peak trajectories other than monotonic diversity decline. Decreasing diversity is concentrated in the South and West, among places with higher levels of diversity and larger proportions of Hispanic or black residents at the beginning of the study period. These places exhibit complex shifts in racial–ethnic structure, but Hispanic succession predominates.
... Existing studies of spatial segregation often adopt the entropy index as a measure of spatial segregation (Pielou, 1977;White, 1986;Allen and Turner, 1989;Wong, 1993;Reardon and O'Sullivan, 2004). This paper, on the other hand, defines segregation measures in a different manner as shown in Equation (6). ...
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This paper proposes a new method for analyzing the segregation between point distributions. Though there have been proposed numerous methods and measures in segregation analysis, they have at least three deficiencies: (1) statistical significance of segregation is not evaluated, (2) detailed attributes of points are not considered, and (3) the relationship between different dimensions of segregation is not fully discussed. To resolve these problems, this paper proposes a new method for analyzing the segregation between point distributions. We introduce a general procedure of evaluating the individual components of segregation. This procedure helps us find independent components of segregation and provides a means of assessing their statistical significance. It also permits us to take into account the detailed attributes of points in segregation analysis. To test the validity of the proposed method, we apply it to the analysis of synthetic and real datasets. The result supports the technical soundness of the method and provides empirical findings.
... Information entropy proposed by Shannon (1948) can be employed to describe the degree of spatial dispersion in urban sprawl (Yeh & Li, 2001). We can calculate the one-dimensional discrete information entropy of a city's population distribution profile along the radial by using the following formula (Allen & Turner, 1989;Chapman, 1970;Chen, 2009): ...
... The groups used for quantifying diversity are Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic Asian population. The index scores take low values when an area is dominated by one group and high values when the groups are relatively equal in size (Turner & Allan, 1989;White, 1986). Percentage of population foreign-born served as a measure of immigrant population density in each zip code area. ...
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... Los Angeles County is considered as one of the most ethnically diverse places in the US (Allen and Turner, 1989), as well as the most populous county in the nation in terms of total population, and also the number of Chinese residents. As in many other cities, LA' s Chinese population was historically centred in a downtown Chinatown, which can be traced back to the last century. ...
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... Rather than describing how any two groups are segregated from one another, we examine several racial/ethnic groups at once in order to describe California's overall degree of geographic homogeneity or heterogeneity. Using this type of analysis with national data from 1980, some scholars found that high diversity was most evident in towns and cities in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas (Allen and Turner, 1989). More recently, studies of the Los Angeles metropolitan area between 1980 and 1990 have shown the emergence of large and concentrated Latino neighborhoods as well as the persistence of largely white coastal areas (Clark, 1996). ...
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... 5. The entropy index and the closely related Simpson index have been applied to several types of spatial unit, including urban places with populations of 10 000 or more (Allen and Turner, 1989), census tracts (Clark, 1996) and block groups (Talen, 2006). 6. ...
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Urban violence in the form of ethnic and religious crises and even open warfare has been on the increase in many African cities in the recent years. Observation from literature shows that the role of intangible location attributes as mobilising agents are among the most important questions of this century as conflicts linked to ethnicity and religion have led to significant destruction of life and residential properties. Due to the number of crises in Jos metropolis over the last two decades, there has been a process of residential segregation along religious lines, dividing the city into predominantly Christian and Muslim areas. This thesis, therefore, attempts to examine the impact of intangible location attributes on the values of residential properties in Jos metropolis, Nigeria. Data were collected by interviews, self-administered surveys through questionnaire and direct observation. The stratified random sampling technique was employed in order to generate the data needed for the research. 1000 respondents and 10 consultancy firms were selected among the occupiers of residential properties and estate firms respectively, which form the sample size for the research. However, out of 1000 and 120 questionnaires administered to the respondents and estate firms respectively, only 876 and 110 were retrieved back. Simple percentage distribution tables, charts, graphs, thematic analysis, photographs and narrations among others were used to analyse the data for the research. The findings of the research revealed that intangible location attributes are the main indicators that influence the values of residential properties in the study area. It has also been established through the findings of this research that the intangible attributes of location have great implication on the values of residential properties in the study area. The results of the analysis show that there is relationship between intangible location attributes and provision, availability and maintenance of neighbourhood facilities in the study area. The research has contributed immensely to the existing body of knowledge on residential property value indicators by introducing intangible location attributes as additional and new phenomena that influence the values of residential properties in the study area. The research has thrown up challenges, especially in linking the importance of intangible location attributes in determining residential property value with construction and real estate management, valuation, and project development appraisal. There is an utmost need on the part of the estate surveyors and valuers and real estate appraisers to take into account intangible location attributes when carrying out valuation or feasibility and viability appraisals respectively in the study area. There is also a need on the part of the investors and property developers to take into consideration intangible attributes of location whenever they want to embark on real estate investment to avoid wasting of capital. vii ABSTRAK Keganasan bandar dalam bentuk krisis etnik dan agama dan juga peperangan terbuka telah meningkat di bandar-bandar Afrika pada tahun-tahun kebelakangan ini. Pemerhatian dari literatur menunjukkan bahawa peranan ciri-ciri lokasi yang tidak ketara sebagai agen menggerakkan adalah antara soalan yang paling penting abad ini sebagai konflik yang dikaitkan dengan etnik dan agama yang telah membawa kepada kemusnahan yang ketara hidup dan harta kediaman. Disebabkan bilangan krisis di metropolis Jos lebih dua dekad yang lalu, terdapat satu proses pengasingan kediaman di sepanjang garisan agama, membahagikan bandar ke kawasan yang sebahagian besarnya Kristian dan Islam. Tesis ini, oleh itu, cuba untuk memeriksa kesan ciri-ciri lokasi yang tidak ketara ke atas nilai hartanah kediaman di metropolis Jos, Nigeria. Data telah dikumpulkan dengan temuduga, sendiri ditadbir tinjauan melalui soal selidik dan pemerhatian secara langsung. Teknik persampelan rawak telah bekerja untuk menjana data yang diperlukan untuk penyelidikan. 1000 responden dan 10 firma perunding telah dipilih di kalangan responden dan firma hartamah masing-masing, membentuk saiz sampel untuk penyelidikan. Walau bagaimanapun, daripada 1000 dan 120 soal selidik yang ditadbirkan kepada responden dan firma hartanah masing-masing, hanya 876 dan 110 yang diambil kembali. Jadual taburan peratusan mudah, carta, graf, analisis tematik, gambar-gambar dan riwayat antara lain telah digunakan untuk menganalisis data untuk penyelidikan. Hasil dari penyelidikan ini menunjukkan bahawa ciri-ciri lokasi yang tidak ketara adalah petunjuk utama yang mempengaruhi nilai harta kediaman di kawasan kajian. Ia juga telah ditubuhkan melalui penemuan kajian ini bahawa sifat-sifat tidak ketara lokasi mempunyai implikasi yang besar ke atas nilai hartanah kediaman di kawasan kajian. Keputusan analisis menunjukkan bahawa terdapat hubungan di antara ciri-ciri lokasi yang tidak ketara dan peruntukan, ketersediaan dan penyelenggaraan kemudahan kejiranan di kawasan kajian. Kajian yang telah banyak memberi sumbangan kepada badan pengetahuan yang sedia ada pada petunjuk nilai hartanah kediaman dengan memperkenalkan ciri-ciri lokasi yang tidak ketara seperti fenomena lain yang mempengaruhi nilai harta kediaman di kawasan kajian. Kajian yang telah menghasilkan cabaran, terutamanya dalam menghubungkan kepentingan attrbutes lokasi yang tidak ketara dalam menentukan nilai harta kediaman dengan pembinaan dan pengurusan hartanah, penilaian, dan penilaian projek pembangunan. Terdapat keperluan yang penting pada bahagian juruukur estet dan penilai dan pentaksir hartanah untuk mengambil kira sifat-sifat lokasi tidak ketara apabila menjalankan penilaian atau kajian kemungkinan dan pentaksiran daya maju di kawasan kajian. Terdapat juga keperluan di pihak pelabur dan pemaju hartanah untuk mengambil kira sifat-sifat tidak ketara lokasi apabila mereka ingin memulakan pelaburan hartanah untuk mengelakkan pembaziran modal. viii CONTENTS
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With a population of 14.5 millon in 1990, Los Angeles is the largest metropolitan region of the United States after New York. In the last 30 years, the city has emerged as a First World metropolis with a substantial Third World immigrant population. Its ethnic profile has been transformed by a massive labour migration, mainly from Mexico, and by a substantial immigration of professionals and entrepreneurs, mainly from East Asia and the Middle East. Partly reflecting this differentiation in types of immigrants, its economy has been polarized between a highwage sector which attracts immigrant professionals and a low-wage sector of small firms, often owned or managed by immigrant entrepreneurs and providing employment for labor migrants. These changes are also occurring in other metropolitan regions of Europe and the United states, but they are most striking in Los Angeles where they provide an image of things to come.
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A few researchers have mentioned the scale sensitivity of segregation index, D. In this paper, I discuss analytically and empirically why using large enumeration areal units usually results in low segregation measures, and using small areal units produces relatively high segregation measures. The discussion is also applicable to the multi-group variant of D. A major finding is that if people of the same ethnic groups are positively spatially auto-correlated, increasing the size of areal units of analysis may not lower D initially, because only people of the same group are added. But enlarging the areal units subsequently may include population of other ethnic groups, and therefore could lower D. However, if the boundaries of the larger enumeration units are drawn to include only population of the same group, then D will not change significantly. Both the spatial autocorrelation of ethnic group population and zonal pattern are critical factors in determining the scale sensitivity of D.
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Urban geography and urban studies employ a very rich set of analytical tools to analyze a variety of urban issues and problems. At the same time, GIS possess very powerful spatial tools and provide a very flexible environment for spatial analysis. In this paper, we demonstrate that urban segregation studies can benefit tremendously from GIS technology. Several analytical tools for segregation are incorporated into GIS. Exploratory methods for segregation studies in GIS are introduced. The approach to integrate urban analysis tools with GIS introduced here can also be adopted to address other types of urban issues and problems.
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Although there are many studies of the residential segregation of ethnic groups in cities in various parts of the world, very few address the degree to which segregation levels vary across an urban system, let alone rigorously analyse those variations. Data on segregation across all US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in 1980 and 2000 at the census tract scale have been analysed, using a modified index of isolation, to examine variations in segregation levels, according to their size, the relative size of the various ethnic minorities there, their ethnic diversity, and their location. Strong relationships are identified for all three of the country's major ethnic minority groups - Blacks, Asians and Hispanics. These suggest that Asians and Hispanics are disadvantaged in the labour and housing markets, so that as their number increases so does their level of segregation. Blacks are disadvantaged too: their segregation is compounded by a legacy of decades of discrimination, especially in the older-established parts of the country. Copyright (c) 2004 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.
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Maps showing the geographical distribution of 44 ethnic and racial groups in the United States are presented. Maps are also included showing internal migration by ethnic group and refugee settlement the distribution of ethnic groups in 1920 and the distribution of the North American Indian population. Data are primarily from the 1980 census. Statistical data are also presented in tabular form concerning the population of each U.S. county by ethnic group for 1980. (ANNOTATION)
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"The purposes of the present paper are to show the relationship between measures of population diversity and measures of segregation, to describe the salient properties of these indexes, and to demonstrate the empirical interrelationships among them." Some measures not frequently used in population studies are considered, and empirical illustrations are given of the significance of using one measure rather than another. In particular, the author stresses proportional reduction of error interpretations for an index and considers its ability to handle more than two groups. The primary geographic focus is on the United States. The "introductory section of the paper treats conceptual issues in more detail. The second section reviews selected measures and recent critical viewpoints, while the third section tests their empirical performance. The conclusion makes some recommendations about the selection of an index. A detailed bibliography follows."