Segregation Nation II: The Interactivating

by Jacob Davies

Just a quick link to a nifty mapping tool at the New York Times that illustrates how and where people of different races live; a little like the ones I posted a while back, but scalable.

One thing apparent in the Bay Area maps - I suspect elsewhere too, but I only know the Bay Area - is that much of the segregation is really just by income. Rich people live with other rich people, just like everyone else mostly lives with people of about their income level. It's just that almost all the rich people are white, and almost all the really poor people are Hispanic or black. In-between are all kinds of people though, and they tend to be more mixed-up.

Hopefully they'll do some more of these with other stats. I would love to see owner-occupied versus rental housing, for instance.

Comments

[Roger Moore]

There's definitely some segregation beyond class, in my area at least. I think it's mostly driven by recent immigrants tending to stick together. Many of those recent immigrants are middle class or wealthy, but they still prefer to stick together rather than spread out. So middle class Chinese immigrants move to Arcadia, Temple City, or Alhambra rather than Pasadena or Sierra Madre. Rich Chinese immigrants move to San Marino rather than Beverly Hills.

[Console]

There's a lot of rich whites, but by the same token there's a lot of poor whites compared to minorities, simply going by sheer numbers.

Integrated poor neighborhoods aren't very easy to find though. I mean, even in relatively well integrated cities, that's not something you typically find.

[liberal japonicus]

Thismight be of interest

[wj]

What I find irritating is that, while they presumably have the right number of dots per census block for each ethnic group, within a given census block the dots appear to be scattered randomly. How else to explain the appearance of dots spread across areas which are unpopulated range land and/or regional parks? Both simply have no residents. It may not matter for small urban census blocks; but for larger (geographically) rural blocks, it can be rather misleading at first.

[Jacob Davies]

I think that's just a problem with the resolution of the original data combined with the zoom level. They move to a county-level view when you zoom out and then scatter dots randomly; or when they have large divisions then they scatter them randomly even when zoomed in.

lj, interesting & promising. Here in Oakland I think there are promising signs, partly as a result of not-quite-so-rich whites being priced out of San Francisco entirely. As usual the process is all about Stuff White People Like, but since one of those things is "better public schools" and another is "much less crime", and they have more social capital to help make those things happen, it's still good. Unfortunately the subprime boom & bust pretty much obliterated the housing market in the low-end. The only good news is that houses at the low-end are now relatively cheap again.

[Scott de B.]

wj,

I assume the database is organized by census tract. There is no data on the distribution of the population within the tract. Other than entering the entire census into the database (including addresses), I am not sure that would be possible to do.

[wj]

Well, I would think that the census tracks could be defined so that they simply did not include areas where the population is necessarily zero. (But maybe this cold I'm fighting is just making me grumpy.)

[hairshirthedonist]

Well, I would think that the census tracks could be defined so that they simply did not include areas where the population is necessarily zero.

Overlay satellite photos and randomly cram the dots only into places where there are buildings. I can't view the mapping tool at work, so my suggestion might be silly for reasons that aren't apparent to me.

[ms]

I always knew Chicago was generally incredibly segregated, but it is shocking how much so in that granular level. I've looked at the other cities I've lived in, and most of the segregation could be ascribed to income level, but in Chicago it looks purely racial.

[cleek]

i love that map thingy.

if i look around my area of NC, things remain pretty much around 75% white, 10% black, the rest hispanic and asian. but if i slide west on NC 64, things stay that way until i reach the little burgh of "Siler City" (pop 7000). that place, for some reason, is 50% hispanic.

why? Wiki says it's due to "illegal immigration". but why Siler City? are illegal immigrants attracted to Aunt Bee's burial place.

fun stuff.

[Slartibartfast]

Funny: in Florida, there are many lakes. There are many lakes within a mile of my house. Every single one of those lakes has several dots on it; some have as many as 50.

Some of the census tracts are more than 50% water, in terms of area.