I’ve been spending a bit of time comparing Eric Fischer’s maps of racial/ethnic distributions in US cities. He’s got two sets, one based off the 2000 census and one from 2010.
And something strikes me about the H. If you look at ethnicity inside the loop, it follows a textbook sectoral distribution, with clearly discernible boundaries at major rail lines:
But this pattern fades as you move further out. Here’s a chunk of Alief / West Houston:
There’s just no discernible pattern at all. A few individual apartment complexes are predominantly one ethnicity, but the area as a whole is thoroughly mixed. Mission Bend (top left) is particularly heterogeneous.
You can see a lot of the same in LA. There’s the stereotypical areas… Santa Monica and Beverly Hills are white, Compton is black, East LA is Latino, the San Gabriel Valley is Asian.
But check out Pasadena, the SF Valley, parts of the Southbay (like SE of the 405/105 junction), the area east of the 710 and south of the 105…
Yep. I noticed that too when I saw it on the New York Times’ Map of the same thing. It’s pretty neat, and interesting to note the wider mix out in the suburbs.