NYT maps diversity shifts across every neighborhood in the US
By: Eric Gundersen
This weekend the New York Times identified every census tract in the US that grew notably more racially diverse since 2000, and then analyzed millions of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records to map the changes between white and nonwhite home buyers in each neighborhood in America.
This amazing reporting and analysis by Emily Badger, Quoctrung Bui, and Robert Gebeloff shows how predominantly minority neighborhoods close to downtown are growing whiter, while suburban neighborhoods that have been largely white are seeing an increase of black, Hispanic and Asian-American residents.
The entire country is mapped, highlighting census tracts where a “diversity index” value grew by ten or more percentage points between 2000 and 2017. That index represents the chance of two randomly selected residents being of different races. Among these tracts — more than one out of every three nationwide — blue represents places with a growing nonwhite population and orange shows areas that have grown more diverse because of an influx of white residents:
In America, racial diversity has much more often come to white neighborhoods. Between 1980 and 2000, more than 98 percent of census tracts that grew more diverse did so in that way, as Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American families settled in neighborhoods that were once predominantly white.
But since 2000, according to an analysis of demographic and housing data, the arrival of white residents is now changing nonwhite communities in cities of all sizes, affecting about one in six predominantly African-American census tracts. The pattern, though still modest in scope, is playing out with remarkable consistency across the country — in ways that jolt the mortgage market, the architecture, the value of land itself.
The entire article is amazing, and I hope you’ll take the time to read it. It’s also an amazing example of how open data — in this case from the Census and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act — enables journalism that drives social and policy conversations across America. It’s a reminder that continued investment in open data by the government provides a healthier, fact-based discourse.
For another example of using Home Morgage Disclosure Act data, see Mike Bryne’s amazing talk at Gov Summit (HMDA starts at 8:24).
Neighborhoods that grew more diverse between 2000 and 2017 was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.