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How do diverse suburbs help if most people just run into the house as soon as they get home? It's not like they talk to their neighbors or anything.
In cities, people are forced to interact. In the suburbs, you can be isolated as much as possible. How often do people come home in the suburb and literally run from their car into their house without saying hi to anyone?
Cities, especially super diverse ones like Chicago and NYC, force people to interact with each other, especially at the core.
Is there a reason why you included Chicago as "super diverse." instead of LA or Miami? Those cities do have a significantly larger foreign born population than Chicago and are less segregated.
Not all suburbs are cookie cutter houses that are isolated. Suburbs are a very catch all term. You can have dense and diverse suburbs.
Look at the San Fernando Valley of LA. That is more dense and diverse than anything outside an eight mile radius of the loop in Chicago.
With a few exceptions, if the suburbs are diverse the urban core is probably going to be diverse. The only exceptions I can think of are some cities in the Midwest and Northeast like Detroit or D.C. where the city is majority black. Areas where property values are high in the inner city, such as Boston or Manhattan, will probably have more whites than cities with less prestigious inner city precincts/downtown areas.
Exactly.
The thing is, is that even for minorities and immigrants the nation over, the suburbs is where they want to live and have better schools and safe space for kids to play.
Also, as areas become highly gentrified they become less diverse, as they becoming appealing to young professionals who grew up in white suburbia who find the suburbs boring, yet ironically are most attracted to urban neighborhoods where everyone is like them.
Now, if you are talking about EXURBS where you have newly built subdivisions built in cornfields, then that is a different story, and that image of suburbia is often what comes to mind.
But older, more affordable straight middle class suburbs, especially just beyong the city limits in many cases are some of the most diverse areas these days.
Examples: Cleveland Heights is more diverse and eclectic, then the virtually all black east side of most of Cleveland proper.
In Detroit, Dearborn, Ferndale, and Southfield are more diverse than Detroit proper which is almost all black in most of the city. The most diverse community in that metro area is Hamtramck, and urban municipality surrounded by Detroit city on all sides. A historically HUGE Polish, (and Ukrainian to a lesser extent) is now transitioning to more Arab, Bengali, and Albanian (as well as black american) and has maintained its destination for immigrants by keeping the physical deterioration of surrounding Detroit neighborhoods from happening. Also, South Detroit is mostly hispanic but mixed with black, and ethnic white.
For DC, I can say that there is a lot of diversity in NoVA and MoCo. There are enclaves of asian, middle eastern, and hispanic ethnicities everywhere! In DC itself though, it seems to be pretty much just black/white. You can predict what ethnicity will be the majority on the metro train depending on what color line you're riding.
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
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Not all suburbs are created equal. For instance, Maywood, IL is hardly akin to Schaumburg, IL...or especially Geneva, IL. They are VASTLY different places with different urbanism and diversity (or lack of diversity).
Boston and DC are the inverse of each other when it comes to diversity. Boston has largely homogeneous suburbs and a very diverse core. DC has diverse suburbs and a largely homogeneous core. Do you think these facts have any bearing on the way the average resident in both of these metro areas experience diversity?
Very interesting thread. In Boston, you can see the diversity on the T, but will probably experience less diversity at the Natick Collection Mall. In DC, the metro riders are largely white or black, but loads of diversity can be experienced at suburban malls such as Tyson's Corner Center.
People who claim Boston is "lily white" are not correct in assessing the city. Boston is a very racially diverse city with a very significant immigrant population. Likewise, those who claim DC is largely and black and white, are correct in assessing the city, but are way off with regard to the suburbs, as Montgomery County, MD and Fairfax County, VA are both around 1/3 Hispanic and Asian and both have populations that are over 30% foreign born (more than all other strictly suburban US counties).
Is there a reason why you included Chicago as "super diverse." instead of LA or Miami? Those cities do have a significantly larger foreign born population than Chicago and are less segregated.
Not all suburbs are cookie cutter houses that are isolated. Suburbs are a very catch all term. You can have dense and diverse suburbs.
Look at the San Fernando Valley of LA. That is more dense and diverse than anything outside an eight mile radius of the loop in Chicago.
Miami diverse? Where are the Asians? Yeah, having many different types of Latin Americans is sooo diverse.
Los Angeles? You mean the location of the LA riots in 1992? Black people leaving by the hundreds of thousands? You mean that diverse cornicopia of people from different parts of Mexico?
Is there anything in LA like the North Side of Chicago, which has Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics living side by side? Probably not.
There isn't anything like having a superdiverse core.
Very interesting thread. In Boston, you can see the diversity on the T, but will probably experience less diversity at the Natick Collection Mall. In DC, the metro riders are largely white or black, but loads of diversity can be experienced at suburban malls such as Tyson's Corner Center.
People who claim Boston is "lily white" are not correct in assessing the city. Boston is a very racially diverse city with a very significant immigrant population. Likewise, those who claim DC is largely and black and white, are correct in assessing the city, but are way off with regard to the suburbs, as Montgomery County, MD and Fairfax County, VA are both around 1/3 Hispanic and Asian and both have populations that are over 30% foreign born (more than all other strictly suburban US counties).
Exactly. I just posted this in the DC forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
I started this thread because people on here always talk about the diversity of the DC region (which I don't doubt). However, as a District resident, the overwhelming majority of people I see on a day-to-day basis are black or white. Rarely do I see a black woman (or a woman of any race) in hijab. Rarely do I hear a language other than English (occasionally Spanish) spoken on Metro or the bus. And rarely do I see a mixed group of HS students at Gallery Place or on the train. This is so different from New York or Boston where there seems to be more racial interspersion and the cultural differences are more apparent (at least in the city).
I know many people will say, "Well, if you want diversity, then go out to Wheaton." But isn't one of the big pluses of city living supposed to be the diversity in the city? Doesn't it kind of defeat the point of living in the city if I have to drive out to Wheaton to see real diversity?
I came to DC for work. I will never return to Boston. I didn't like the vibe. There aren't enough professional opportunities for minorities there. But that fact doesn't detract from the city's cultural offerings.
I think your own words tell us all we need to know about the state of race and prosperity in Boston versus Washington D.C. compliments of the Washington D.C. forum. Just saying....
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