Cities that most radically depart from and most closely resemble "typical" US demos
 

Obviously the very big cities are less white than the US average.


Radically depart from:

New York
Boston
Los Angeles
Bay Area
Miami
Honolulu

Fairly typical:

Chicago
Dallas

Are you just comparing city demographics?

Metro Chicago and metro New York demographics are extremely similar in terms of percentage of white, black, and hispanic. Obviously there are a lot of nuances within those major groupings, but I don't see how Chicago is considered demographically similar to avg while NYC is radically different.

The outliers would be metros like Boston, Pittsburgh (which are heavily white), Honolulu (heavily API), L.A., Miami (heavily hispanic), and Atlanta (heavily Black).

Yes, looking at the composition of the immigrant and ethnocultural populations as well. New York's immigrant population is rather unique - West Indians, Bangladeshis, former Soviets etc., plus it has a large Orthodox Jewish population and Italian is the most common ancestry. Chicago is more "typical" - Mexico is by far the most common birthplace, Black population is virtually all African American, Asian population is about the same as the national share etc.

New York, L.A., and Miami likely have the highest percentages of foreign-born. San Francisco is probably the most Asian metro area.

Houston is another one that is definitely not typical. Very diverse racially and ethnically with a high % of foreign born.

Kind of irritating that you have to mention Houston considering it's more diverse than most on that list.

Memphis is the only 1M+ metro to be majority Black.

83% of El Paso's population is Hispanic. It has the 5th highest percentage of Hispanics in a US city, and it's the largest city in the US with more than 70% of the population being Hispanic. Among cities with at least 500,000, Miami ranks 2nd with 70% of the population being Hispanic, and San Antonio is 3rd with 63%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ic_populations

Where are we drawing the line to be considered a "big city"?

i don’t think of an american metro being “big” until a sort of vague 5 million mark. although west coast cities like portland punch above weight. midwestern and southern cities have to throw a lot of warm bodies at a town to feel big, generally.

chicago is sort of the archetype in my mind of a place lifting its way into being a “big city” through brute force. seattle can be much more effete in this way.

Let's use 2 million+ MSA population

Indeed. Dallas, Houston, Miami and Atlanta were the last to join this pack, between 2000 and 2010. Seattle and Phoenix will do it within a couple of years from now, although it will still be hard to call Phoenix “big city”.

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About the thread, people are saying every major city is not typical, which defeats the purpose of it.

I’d say New Orleans is very unique. Ditto for Honolulu and more recently, Miami.

Honolulu is one of the most well-balanced metros in the country in regards to Race & ethnicity as it is defined by the US Census.

...and there has been a huge shift as the share of Asian alone declines while the Hispanic/Latino and Black Populations continues to increase. For example, the Hispanic/Latino population is now larger than the Pacific Islander population in raw numbers and is the fastest growing ethnic group in the metro and state. Asian alone was around 46-47% in 2010 for Honolulu's metro and is now roughly 43%.

In 2019:

Asian alone 43%
Two or More Races (Mixed Races) 23%
non-Hispanic White alone 18%
Hispanic or Latino 10%
Pacific Islander alone 10%
Black or African American alone 3%
Native American alone 0.3%

I find the question/premise kind of off. There is no typical American city and they almost all typical American cities. The only real outliers are Las Vegas and Honolulu, with possibly New Orleans and Miami behind them. All others are variations on a themes, one traditional pre-car urbanism, the other auto age sub-urbansm, but most a hybrid of the two.

To give a city that's pretty typical:

Phoenix is bang-on average with percentage of white population. It has higher than average Hispanic and Native American populations, and lower than average black and Asian populations.

Like most western cities, Phoenix has a lower median age (33) than the nation median (37), which is interesting given Phoenix's perception as a retirement destination. And like most western cities, Phoenix has a higher sex ratio (99.3 males for every 100 females) than the national ratio (96.7 males for every 100 females).

Economically, Phoenix is slightly below the US overall for median incomes, but Arizona is right around the 25th state in median income, making Phoenix again pretty typical.

I never got the impression from being in PHX that I wasn't in a huge metro area. It's just decentralized and sprawled out like most sunbelt cities but with a scaled down LA/ Inland Empire thing going on.

It's more like a scaled up Fontana than a scaled down LA.

I haven't been to Phoenix since I lived there in 83 and at that time it was definitely like a decentralized suburb. But I now get the impression that it has kind of 'grown up' in density with bigger clusters including more downtown. I've seen pictures of Tempe and that city has definitely become dense and walkable. So, it seems to be growing up as a metro. I definitely want to visit.

It might have "grown up" since '83, but it ain't no scaled down LA. San Diego is a scaled down LA. Austin is a scaled down LA. Phoenix, despite being much bigger than those cities, still has a sleepy suburban feel.