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I appreciate the hard work. As someone that has compiled lists for the sake of sharing findings---I say kudos.
At the same time...
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars
Mildly surprised NYC is #1 and not San Francisco or LA. I'd have thought "white" people (including of course everyone from Russians to Egyptians to Irish to Haredi Jews) would be dominant in the NYC area.
Well, that's because total percent matters. It's one thing to count the number of groups that meet a certain threshold, but as far as proportion, I'd like to know what percent of the total population they represent because that speaks to their prevalence in the area. Languages for example, this is from 2021:
Metro Areas(MSA) by Percentage of Population that Speaks a Language Other than English or Spanish, 2021:
San Jose, CA 35.5%(657,921)
San Francisco, CA 26.6%(1,165,136)
New York, NY-NJ-PA 19.7%(3,667,949)
Seattle, WA 18.6%(701,601)
Los Angeles, CA 18.2%(2,236,840)
Sacramento, CA 16.6%(377,313)
Boston, MA-NH 16.3%(761,231)
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV 16.1%(962,625)
San Diego, CA 12.8%(394,756)
Miami, FL 12.2%(704,985)
Chicago, IL-IN-WI 11.9%(698,149)
Detroit, MI 11.4%(470,453)
Las Vegas, NV 10.7%(230,800)
Minneapolis, MN-WI 10.4%(358,354)
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 9.9%(583,088)
Houston, TX 9.8%(658,625)
Atlanta, GA 9.6%(556,267)
Dallas, TX 9.5%(693,344)
Orlando, FL 8.8%(228,439)
Austin, TX 8.3%(184,011)
Riverside, CA 7.6%(331,356)
Tampa, FL 7.4%(223,052)
Denver, CO 7.1%(199,050)
Phoenix, AZ 5.9%(277,437)
San Antonio, TX 3.7%(89,571)
El Paso, TX 1.5%(12,829)
San Jose is literally in a class by itself when it comes to this regard. A full third of the population speak a language other than the 2 most widely spoken in the US. SF is a distant second.
So I probably should go into further detail about how these rankings came about. I did not choose which ones I thought were more diverse and assign them scores, everything is very strict in methodology. Per Capita and Total Population were factored in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chadnewt
Which years' data are used in the calc?
2022 ACS 5-year estimates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by siula
Seems accurate. I would only put Boston ahead of Dallas. Atlanta, Sacramento and Dallas don’t have nearly the same diversity in their white/European population as Boston. And Chicago’s black population is not diverse like Boston’s either.
I didn't put them based on what I thought, it was scored based on total population and per capita factoring in racial diversity, linguistic diversity, immigrant diversity, and integration.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars
Mildly surprised NYC is #1 and not San Francisco or LA. I'd have thought "white" people (including of course everyone from Russians to Egyptians to Irish to Haredi Jews) would be dominant in the NYC area.
Honestly a bit surprised Chicago is so high. I thought it was fairly white on a metro area level (compared to a lot of larger coastal and Sunbelt cities at least), even if not on a city level. In particular the Asian population is lower than a lot of places. Although I hear that's changing in the far southwest burbs (Naperville, Aurora, Plainfield, Oswego) with the rapid growth of the South Asian community out there.
Because immigrant diversity and linguistic diversity were half the scoring system on this list and no one can compete with NYC on the total numbers or the per capita numbers in that regard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair
Well, that's because total percent matters.
But again, that was factored into these numbers.
Ill give an example of how points were obtained in post below.
Let's see the list again with the top foreign language excluded for each.
Not fair to pick one language just to prove the point that Spanish is not as big in the Bay.
Make it even across the board and list everything except English and the next most spoken language for every metro.
I used Simpson's Diversity Index to determine points given for this category. I gave bonus points for the concentration of the smallest represented group.
Simpson's Diversity Index is for San Jose is 3.04 which is very high. This is multiplied by 10 to determine the number of points. That means I awarded San Jose 30.4 points for its racial diversity
San Jose's smallest represented group are Black residents. I awarded 2.3 points for that. Its very low relative to other urban areas smallest groups.
The next category to consider was immigrant/ethnic diversity. Both total number of immigrants as well as per capita number of immigrants were considered. For each nationality with 25,000 immigrants in the urban area, a point was awarded. San Jose has five:
But San Jose is a relatively small urban area compared to others on this list so per capita is important to consider too. For every nationality that contributes at least 0.5% to the total population, a point was given. San Jose has 9:
So that means, in total, San Jose was given 14 points for immigrant/nationality diversity.
Next was Linguistic Diversity. The method is the exact same as immigrant/nationality diversity. One point for each language spoken by at least 25,000 people and one point for each language where at least 0.5% of the total population speaks that language. In the total group, San Jose only had 5:
Spanish: 269,472
Chinese (all dialects): 176,739
Indian Languages: 139,302
Vietnamese: 108,091
Tagalog: 46,181
The last thing considered was integration. The was measured by six data points: White-Black dissimilarity, White-Hispanic dissimilarity, White-Asian dissimilarity, Black-Asian dissimilarity, Black-Hispanic dissimilarity, and Hispanic-Asian dissimilarity. The combination of all of those values were used. In San Jose's case, the combo of all six points was 231.9 which is low.
As Im sure you have all noticed, this is a positive ranking system but the lower the number for dissimilarity, the more diverse. So what I did was flip them. I took 600 (100 for each metric) and subtracted the value. This would put San Jose at 368.1. But a number that high would not combine was the points of the other metrics so I divided by 25. That means San Jose got 14.7 points for integration.
One other point to clarify on linguistic diversity: I did lump the languages spoken in India into one. The reason for this is that data.census.gov does not break down Chinese dialects spoken nor do they go far to break down African languages spoken. If I did not combine the Indian languages, it would skew the rankings towards places with large Indian populations while penalizing those with large Chinese and African speaking populations.
There are three exceptions:
Bengali which is the official language of Bangladesh
Urdu which is the official language of Pakistan
Nepali which is the official language of Nepal
Those three are spoken in India but because of their status outside India I decided to separate them.
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I used to travel all over the country and have been in most of these cities (or did so for leisure) and from from a purely colloquial view this list is on point. A few of them I would shuffle around, but the thing to really pay attention to is the steep drop off the cliff you go after the top 20.
As someone that grew up in two of the cities on the list in the Top 10, it's never not jarring to experience.
This thread has actually been a long time in the making. I have thought long and hard about a way to rank urban areas by diversity. I have wanted to find a way to do so without bias and with data that is sound and whose methodology is sound. Below is what I decided to use to rank these urban areas, the methodology and what I decided to leave out and why.
Areas Examined
Four areas will be looked at: 1) Racial Diversity, 2) Nationality and Immigrant Diversity, 3) Linguistic Diversity, 4) Integration. Racial Diversity will be four categories: Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black, Non-Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic of any Race. While I am aware “Hispanic” is not a race, but it is being judged against racial categories largely because of how the data is divided within data.census.gov but also how residential patterns form between Hispanics and other racial groups.
Methodology
The source for this data is data.census.gov for Racial, Nationality, Immigrant, and Linguistic Diversity, and Brown University's Diversity Project for the Integration data. The data used will be by Contiguous Urban Area so as to capture what a person would be most likely to experience when visiting a particular city except for the integration data which is only available by metro area.
To measure Racial Diversity, Simpson's Diversity Index will be used. The value of "1/d" will be multiplied by 10 to determine the total racial diversity value of the Urban area. For bonus points on this ranking, the concentration percentage of the lowest represented group will be added to the total points from the Simpson's Diversity Index ranking.
Nationality and Immigrant Diversity will be measured to account for both total number and per capita immigration. For each country that has over 25,000 people in an Urban Area, that urban area will gain one point. Each country that contributes at least 0.5% to the total population of the Urban Area will contribute one point to that Urban Area as well. This is to balance the scales between larger urban areas and smaller ones.
Linguistic Diversity will be measured the same way as Nationality and Immigrant Diversity. Total number and per capita diversity will be measured with each over 25,000 and each over 0.5% of the total population given one point to that Urban Area.
To score integration, the Dissimilarity Indexes of six metrics will be looked at: White-Black, White-Hispanic, White-Asian, Black-Hispanic, Black-Asian, and Asian-Hispanic. Since the scoring and points system of this ranking is positive but the lower the Dissimilarity score the more integrated, the Dissimilarity index of each of those parameters will be subtracted from 600 and divided by 25 to determine the number of points each urban area gets. The division by 25 is necessary to keep the point system similar across all categories.
Ranking System
The Urban Areas will be ranked from top to bottom based on their total score. The higher the score, the more diverse the Urban Area. There will be a total score for all four categories explored and there will be a total score totaling all three categories to rank each one in order of total diversity.
Disclaimer-What I did not Include
There are limitations to this data based on what data.census.gov provides. However, these limitations are limited mostly to the Linguistical side. It is thorough on Race and Nationality.
A consideration was given to additional breakdowns on Ancestry, but the problem is that that section of data.census.gov focuses almost solely on non-Hispanic white breakdowns. Looking at residential patterns, white Americans function more as one block as opposed to English Americans, German Americans, Italian Americans, etc. segregating into their own neighborhoods. Only with foreign born groups do we see such segregation and that data is accounted for in the linguistic and immigrant diversity sections. The non-European "White" groups (Arab, Brazilian, Afghan, and Persian) are also accounted for in the linguistic and immigrant diversity sections. This is also true for the non-White sections of the ancestry breakdowns (Sub-Saharan African).
A consideration was given to ranking places by regions represented, but it honestly felt extremely redundant given the other points covered.
A consideration to incorporate other aspects into this ranking like LGBTQ population and Religious Diversity. The problem is that there is not data consistent with the parameters set for the other topics and the data I could find did not have a sound methodology.
Anyway, the rankings are in the post below.
This is so impressive you should copyright this somehow. It would be disappointing to see someone remix your hard work for a news blog site. I don’t know how that intellectual property stuff works obviously for this situation. However this work shouldn’t be easily co-opted by others.
Last edited by NigerianNightmare; 02-01-2024 at 09:43 AM..
This is so impressive you should copyright this somehow. It would be disappointing to see someone remix your hard work for a news blog site. I don’t know how that intellectual property stuff works obviously for this situation. However this work shouldn’t be easily co-opted by others.
That would be nice, but at the same time I just do this stuff for the passion of it. Its not something I could make money off of in the channels Im aware of. But Im passionate so I do it for me and for you guys on here.
This sort of thing is one of the main reasons I come here!
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