The Most Ethnically Diverse Urban Places in the United States

Abstract Using 1980 U.S. census data, we ranked all urban places over 10,000 in population according to the relative ethnic diversity of their populations, as measured by the entropy index. This statistic reflects the relative heterogeneity of the population in the areal unit, the highest values occurring when all groups are present in equal proportions. The ethnic populations were identified in terms of two different sets or groupings. The first set contains five categories: white, black, Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian and Pacific Island people. The second set has 13 categories and includes specific Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups as well as two categories of whites based on region of ancestral origin in Europe. The results show that larger cities are usually highly diverse, but the most diverse urban places are found throughout the full range of population sues. The places that ranked highest in ethnic diversity are usually part of a metropolitan area, most commonly in the Los Angeles and the San Francisco areas. A number of places in the New York City-northern New Jersey area and others in south Florida, Texas, and Hawaii also ranked high. The most ethnically diverse places are highly varied in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, but army posts constitute a distinctive type. In contrast, the least diverse urban places tend to be small in size, suburban or nonmetropolitan, strongly white with very few minorities, and located in the Northeast and Midwest.