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The East Coast and Midwest cities tend to be more segregated by race/culture despite having mixed demographic numbers on a census. You'd probably have more luck out West (yes, including Texas) and certain Southern cities like Atlanta.
Metro Boston is probably the most socioeconomically segregated place in the country. Lower Fairfield County in Connecticut a close second. Very weak county government and public schools funded 100% with local property taxes. The blue chip suburbs use zoning to make it almost impossible to build high density and affordable housing. Boston proper is very socioeconomically segregated by neighborhood. The blue chip suburbs are fairly agnostic about race & culture as long as you have white collar professional educational ethics. Muslim Pakistani or Iranian physician? No problem. West African university professor? Welcome. Housing project? My lawyer will be submitting the lawsuit.
Location: Miami (prev. NY, Atlanta, SF, OC and San Diego)
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LA was always an interesting place for me when I lived in SoCal. Extremely diverse but I found many like groups tended to stick with their own kind in their own neighborhoods, though there definitely was some intermingling. Heck, the Oscar winning movie “Crash” was based in part on this.
I used to enjoy getting out of OC on weekends and heading up to LA, largely because it was far more diverse and urban. Long Beach was one of my go to neighborhoods, not only because of its proximity to OC but it seemed welcoming of many different groups and was more blue collar/ far less flashy or pretentious than some other parts of LA or portions of OC—even though it has its well off areas (Naples, Bixby Knolls, etc).
Last edited by elchevere; 04-28-2022 at 09:48 AM..
Metro Boston is probably the most socioeconomically segregated place in the country. Lower Fairfield County in Connecticut a close second. Very weak county government and public schools funded 100% with local property taxes. The blue chip suburbs use zoning to make it almost impossible to build high density and affordable housing. Boston proper is very socioeconomically segregated by neighborhood. The blue chip suburbs are fairly agnostic about race & culture as long as you have white collar professional educational ethics. Muslim Pakistani or Iranian physician? No problem. West African university professor? Welcome. Housing project? My lawyer will be submitting the lawsuit.
Haha that's a gracious "probably"...
It definitely is and it's tied with Fairfield Couty IMO. Both are amazingly socioeconomically segregated far beyond what's normal. The only area I can think of that's close is like Essex County/Passaic County NJ.
It's the least socially integrated place from a class viewpoint that you will probably go to in the US. Racially there's intermingling in Boston amongst minority groups but very little amongst white and no white apart from suburban Nidians and collegiate/suburban Chinese.
Your post was very accurate. Doesnt even have to be a housing project, just an apartment building or some townhouses will get you choked out damn near. The wealthy burbs dont even like box stores for that reason.
Because Boston area was laid out well before the car and doesn't have much in the way of modern highway infrastructure to facilitate movement or county government to facilitate modern development... different parts of the metro take on entirely different feels and we have some of the highest concentrations of unique ethnic groups in certain cities in the US (Brockton, Fall River, Lowell, Worcester, Scituate, Randolph). Many more towns are homogenous in socioeconomic and racial makeup. The lack of social integration is why it's kind of folly to loop Boston into its suburbs. They're in the Boston Area but not representative of Boston whatsoever.
I've been curious about this too.
In my experience even when cities are integrated on paper, there's social segregation. There are some exceptions to this like hipster/artsy circles being more mixed, but aside from that I overwhelmingly see people stick to their own
I would also add healthcare workers and the military to circles that are more mixed than average.
The Northeast and Midwest US, having developed and urbanized earlier generally than the rest of the US, are definitely the laggards on integration.
Note that this is not the same as diversity; big cities like New York City or Chicago are very diverse on the whole. But there's still a strong tendency for folks to live in fractured fiefdoms with glaringly different demographics, even right next door to each other.
Videos of people talking about racism in a city are empty because it’s everywhere like GF said. Those are a dime a dozen. And racism racist incidents don’t stop social integration. Also racism take different forms…
To 18Ms point it only are diversity and integration different. Social integration and residential integration are different.
From where I stand both Austin and Houston seem pretty integrated in more ways than one relative to a typical city.
Austin black population is growing- no? So is Houston’s. Both saw their share of the population decline slightly though, am I wrong here?
I believe in the Austin city limits it shrunk slightly in the 2010 census but had healthy growth in the 2020 census. At the metro level it grew consistently in both censuses. Of course White/hispanic/asian growth in Austin is absolutely gangbusters so I think it's accurate that the black share is steadily declining.
Videos of people talking about racism in a city are empty because it’s everywhere like GF said. Those are a dime a dozen. And racism racist incidents don’t stop social integration. Also racism take different forms…
To 18Ms point it only are diversity and integration different. Social integration and residential integration are different.
From where I stand both Austin and Houston seem pretty integrated in more ways than one relative to a typical city.
One of the key perpetrators at the Charlottesville riot was a waiter from Berkeley. I've said it before, even SF has conservative people. Racism knows no ethnicity, income, age or gender. Now, there could be trends within sub groups but a few videos of random people complaining about racism doesn't do it for me. I've seen racism everywhere, even NYC.
One of Red Lion's videos was on Mirabeau Lamar. Yes, Austin had a street named after a racist person.
Of course Houston itself was named after Sam Houston, a person who thought blacks were inferior:
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