The makeup of American communities is changing – some communities are becoming more diverse, whilst others are becoming more segregated. In new research, William A.V. Clark, Eva Andersson, John Osth and Bo Malmberg examine trends in neighborhood diversity in Los Angeles since 2000. They find that only one third of people now live in strongly segregated neighborhoods, down from 40 percent in 2010, and that this increasing diversity has mainly been driven by the decline of homogenous white and black neighborhoods

Andersson, Eva

Clark, William A.V.

Malmberg, Bo

Osth, John

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/10/13/in-los-angeles-an-increase-in-neighborhood-diversity-means-that-segregation-is-on-the-decline/In Los Angeles, increasing neighborhood diversity means thatsegregation is on the decline.The makeup of American communities is changing – some communities arebecoming more diverse, whilst others are becoming more segregated. In newresearch, William A.V. Clark , Eva Andersson, John Osth and Bo Malmbergexamine trends in neighborhood diversity in Los Angeles since 2000. They find thatonly one third of people now live in strongly segregated neighborhoods, down from40 percent in 2010, and that this increasing diversity has mainly been driven by thedecline of homogenous white and black neighborhoods.In 2000, about 40 percent of the population in Los Angeles lived in stronglysegregated neighborhoods. Ten years later, in 2010, only a third of the populationwas still living in such neighborhoods. This trend towards increasing diversity isfurther strengthened by a lack of demographic stability in Los Angeles’neighborhoods. Almost every other inhabitant lives in a neighborhood that hasexperienced significant shifts in the ethno-racial composition of its population duringthe last decade and a half.These are the conclusions of our recent study that uses advanced geo-computational software, EquiPop, toanalyze the demographic compositions of the neighborhoods for every individual living in the Los Angeles area in2000 and 2010. Equipop creates neighborhoods by expanding a buffer around a given location until itencompasses the nearest hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands neighbors and then computes thedemographic composition of the buffer population. This allows a more exact measurement of each individual’sgeographical context, and it also allows a classification of neighborhoods that is based on not a singlegeographical scale but sensitive to shifts in the population composition of both an individual’s immediate neighborsas well as the ethno-racial mix of distant neighbors. The approach is based on the idea that the extent to whichindividuals encounter members from different racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups in everyday life isinfluenced by the patterns of segregation at multiple geographical scales.Using this approach we have identified 20 different neighborhood types in the Los Angeles area ranging fromstrongly homogenous neighborhoods dominated by either black, white, Hispanic or Asian populations to highlydiverse neighborhoods with close to equal shares of the different ethno-racial groups, see Figure 1 and Figure 2.The same classification has been used on both 2000 and 2010 census data and this has allowed us analyze thedynamics of neighborhood change over this period.Figure 1  – Graphs showing the racial composition across multiple spatial scales of the neighborhoodpopulation for 20 different neighborhood types identified in the Los Angeles areas in 2000 and 2010 (clickto enlarge)Note: Neighborhood scales range fromencompassing the closest 12 to the closest51,200 neighbors. The graphs have been orderfrom the least diverse (top row) to the mostdiverse (bottom row) in terms of racialcomposition. In each row the share of Hispanicsdecline and the share of whites increase from thefirst to the fourth column. Neighborhood typeswhere blacks or Asians constitute the largestgroups are in the fifth column.Figure 2 – Population Diversity in the Los Angeles Metropolitan AreaThe most important shift in the Los Angeles area is the decline of homogenous white neighborhoods. In 2000, 32percent of all whites lived in such neighborhoods. In 2010, this share has declined to 21 percent. Alsohomogenous black neighborhoods have experienced a similar decline. In 2000, 15 percent of the black populationliving in homogenous black neighborhoods. In 2010 the share has declined to 11 percent. Homogenous Hispanicneighborhoods, in contrast, maintain their share of the Hispanic population, 33 percent in 2010, up from 31percent in 2000. And Asians increasingly live in Asian dominated areas, 18 percent in 2010, up from 12 percent in2000.Increasing diversity in Los Angeles has mainly been driven by the decline of homogenous white neighborhoodsand to some extent a similar decline in homogenous black neighborhoods. Thus, neighborhoods that have losttheir white homogenous status between 2000 and 2010 have become increasingly diverse gaining significantpopulation shares of mainly Hispanics and to some extent Asians. Neighborhoods that have lost their blackhomogenous status since 2000 have become black/Hispanic mixed neighborhoods in 2010. But changing statusis not restricted to these neighborhood types. The increase in homogenous Hispanic neighborhoods is not only aresult of increasing shares of Hispanics in formerly mixed areas. It is also a result of increases in the Hispanicpopulation and a decrease in the white population around earlier small small-scale concentrations of Hispanics. Asimilar pattern can be seen with respect to the increase in Asian dominated areas. Dynamic diversity, that ischanging neighborhood ethno-racial status over time, is even a stronger characteristic among neighborhoods withsome degree of mixing in both 2000 and 2010. In these neighborhood categories it is almost as if changingneighborhood status is the rule, unchanged neighborhood status the exception.By looking at the scale of interaction from the very local to the larger community we are getting closer tounderstanding what people do and who they are likely to meet in the city. The old administrative unit approach tosegregation does not recognize the complexity of the modern world and that the probability of meeting anotherperson who is different varies with the lens of examination. There is substantial mixing in Los Angeles and this ismerely an example of what is happening in large multi ethnic cities in North America. It reflects the need to providea more nuanced way of capturing the extent to which populations are likely to interact. There are decreasing areasof homogeneous populations and a rapid increase in areas which are a mixture of all the racial and ethnic groups.Diversity and heterogeneity is the new structure of urban society.Our research also shows the strength of multi-scalar measures of neighborhood demographic composition. Withthis approach it becomes possible to analyze the dynamics of neighborhood change in a more detailed way thanever before and also with a tool that better captures the experience of living in diverse metropolitan areasundergoing rapid change.This article is based on the paper, ‘A Multiscalar Analysis of Neighborhood Composition in Los Angeles, 2000–2010: A Location-Based Approach to Segregation and Diversity’, in the Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers. Featured image credit: Ron Reiring (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.            Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, northe London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1LLKFhd _________________________________ About the authorsWilliam A.V. Clark  – University of California, Los AngelesWilliam A.V. Clark is a Professor with research interests in urban geography, spatial demography,and statistics. Professor Clark teaches courses in ethnicity, populations, and California. Eva Andersson  – Stockholm University, SwedenEvan Andersson is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at Stockholm University. Themain themes of her research are residential segregation and neighborhood effects on socio-economic careers. John Osth – Uppsala University, SwedenJohn Osth is a Senior Lecturer in Geography and GIS at Uppsala University. His primary researchinterests are oriented towards Spatial Analysis and GIS software development and quantitativeanalysis in population, economic geography with a special focus on demography and migration, school choice andlabor market opportunities, and the geography of human interaction on the Internet and throughmobile phone usage.Bo Malmberg – Stockholm University, SwedenBo Malmberg is a professor at the Department of Geography of Stockholm University. His years ofresearch cover four different subfields of Human geography: Economic geography; Populationgeography; Urban geography, with focus on residential segregation and neighbourhood effects;and, finally GIS and remote sensing.CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP

In Los Angeles, increasing neighborhood diversity means that segregation is on the decline

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