Racial dot map of the US. 1 dot per person, color-coded by race

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

No offense, I wasn’t including Indian food when I spoke about Asian food. I was mainly focusing on Chinese, Japanese, and Thai which I think the SFV falls short. I can’t comment on Indian food since I don’t eat enough of it to say one way or the other.

I agree the SFV is more interesting than people give it credit for, even I found myself not yearning as much to cross over the hill to see things in the basin. What we do lack are large cultural museums, but again that would be the same as any large American city where typically these are in the central part of the city. We also have a lot going on in North Hollywood, and even Studio City, but then west LA and even Hollywood in a sense is easier to reach from Woodland Hills. I’ve been in the valley for almost seven years now, and I am good with living here there is definitely a lot of diversity here and it’s very much culturally LA city in style.

Universal city-Studio city-sherrman oaks-Encino is a pretty cool corridor. While Encino is less walkable than the former, it's still packed with amenities and one of the better areas In the metro. It's probably has the most office midrises in the sfv as well. I used to work there for a few years, now I'm In downtown burbank, which also has a ton of amenities.

I love Studio city and Sherman oaks.. its's become one of my favorite neighborhoods anywhere. Parts of it remind me of Andersonville in Chicago, just newer.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Universal city-Studio city-sherrman oaks-Encino is a pretty cool corridor. While Encino is less walkable than the former, it's still packed with amenities and one of the better areas In the metro. It's probably has the most office midrises in the sfv as well. I used to work there for a few years, now I'm In downtown burbank, which also has a ton of amenities.

I love Studio city and Sherman oaks.. its's become one of my favorite neighborhoods anywhere. Parts of it remind me of Andersonville in Chicago, just newer.

pinterest.com

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Pittsburgh one of the least diverse major metros in the US?

From Wikipaedia:
Persons of color, or non-white Americans, represent only 13.5 percent of the region's population, compared to 38.7 percent in the United States overall.

The metro area is pretty lily-white, but that's in part because the census defines it overly broadly, including a some counties (like Fayette and Armstrong) which really don't have anything remotely resembling "suburbs" within them. In general none of the outer counties have any nonwhite population to speak of, other than Beaver, which has a fairly sizable black population, including one majority black dying mill town (Aliquippa).

Zooming in to Allegheny County proper (but holding off on the cities) things are a bit more diverse. There's a wide swathe of black suburbia to the east of the city, which is the area that more upwardly-mobile black people from the City of Pittsburgh have traditionally moved to. The many smaller cities and boroughs of the Mon and Turtle Creek valleys are becoming blacker over time, due to a combination of preferential out-migration by white people along with lower-income city residents landing there due to gentrification (these areas have decent bus service, and cheap rentals, meaning they are doable for poor people who need to commute into the city for work or social services). Beyond the black population, the suburbs have long had a pretty substantial South Asian population which was historically focused more to the East of the city, but has more recently swung south. There is an apartment complex in the Green Tree area which has somehow become overwhelmingly Indian, which has in turn resulted in the former residents spilling out over the surrounding area as they become more established.

Now let's turn to the City of Pittsburgh itself:

The city has historically had a sizable black population, albeit a smaller one by the standards of a rust belt city. It never topped 30% of the city's population, and is probably now down to around 25% (all of the population decline of the 2010s was probably due to black flight). The historical heart of the black community was the Hill District, just to the east of Downtown, but urban renewal and the construction of housing projects scattered the black population across much of the city in the 1950s and 1960s. Still, there were never enough black people in the city to trigger the sort of wholesale flight from an entire "side" of a city as in St. Louis or Cleveland. As a result we ended up with a patchwork, where there are black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods in every part of the city (though proportionately more in the North Side and upper East End). In the 1990s the city had a fairly substantive group of Somali bantu refugees, but they have since scattered/acculturated (I seldom see anyone in traditional dress any longer).

Pittsburgh has a large and growing Asian population, but it is almost entirely comprised of college/grad students who attend University of Pittsburgh and CMU. It is also almost entirely restricted to Squirrel Hill (a traditionally Jewish neighborhood) and Shadyside (a traditionally yuppie neighborhood). There really isn't much in terms of a working-class Asian population, other than a substantial population of Bhutanese refugees (really ethnic Nepalis) who settled in the city's southern neighborhoods over the last two decades. They have been increasingly moving out to first-ring suburban neighborhoods as they become established however.

Pittsburgh has virtually no Latino population worth speaking of. For a long period of time the largest concentration of Latinos were just random middle-class folks who came here for college and settled down. There now is a small Mexican community centered around the neighborhood of Beechview in the southern part of the city (the neighborhood has a Mexican grocery and a handful of authentic restaurants) though my understanding is the population has barely increased since 2010.

[hauntedheadnc]

Greenville, SC:



Asheville, NC:



Greenville comes across as much more diverse, which is how it feels on the ground. You'll note that the concentration of white people on Wade Hampton Boulevard, the one that looks like a tiny little blue pair of lungs, is Bob Jones University.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Now let's turn to the City of Pittsburgh itself:

The city has historically had a sizable black population, albeit a smaller one by the standards of a rust belt city. It never topped 30% of the city's population, and is probably now down to around 25% (all of the population decline of the 2010s was probably due to black flight).

that 25% was somewhat unexpected for me, so i went and looked it up.

sure enough, according to the 2019 ACS 5-year, non-hispanic black alone in pittsburgh city proper is 23.5%.

that is a fair bit higher than i would've guessed just going off of impressions.

i mean, that's not a ton lower than chicago's 29.2% for the same demo, and nobody ever thinks of chicago as not having a large black population.

it's probably pittsburgh's outsized share of non-hispanic whites (63.7%) within the city proper that leads to knee-jerk impressions of "not very diverse".

which is kinda funny because that's almost the exact same share as seattle city proper (63.8%), it's just that seattle's non-white demo is much more evenly split between asians, blacks, and latinos.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

that 25% was somewhat unexpected for me, so i went and looked it up.

sure enough, according to the 2019 ACS 5-year, non-hispanic black alone in pittsburgh city proper is 23.5%.

that is a fair bit higher than i would've guessed just going off of impressions.

i mean, that's not a ton lower than chicago's 29.2% for the same demo, and nobody ever thinks of chicago as not having a large black population.

it's probably pittsburgh's outsized share of non-hispanic whites (63.7%) within the city proper that leads to knee-jerk impressions of "not very diverse".

which is kinda funny because that's almost the exact same share as seattle city proper (63.8%), it's just that seattle's non-white demo is much more evenly split between asians, blacks, and latinos.

Other contributing factors I think.

1. Pittsburgh, like many rust belt cities, is heavily segregated. There are a handful of neighborhoods which look integrated on paper, but in reality they tend to have black sections and white sections - unless it's a neighborhood which is in the process of white flight (still happening in parts of the West End, Southern Hilltop, and outer North Side) or it's gentrifying.

2. Pittsburgh has a disproportionately small and invisible black middle class which has completely decamped to the suburbs. Spending time in Cleveland I was surprised at how many random black folks I saw in places like Great Lakes Brewing, having sushi downtown, or in vegetarian cafes. Spaces like this are generally all white in Pittsburgh (or have a smattering of Asians).

[pj3000]

A high percentage of blacks in Pittsburgh live just outside of city limits in urban and older suburban municipalities like Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, Swissvale, Braddock, McKees Rocks, Homestead, and other Mon Valley towns.

If you included bordering and close-in places like these, the “city” black percentage would be significantly higher. This really results in an inaccurate understanding of the presence of the black population in Pittsburgh.

For example, the black population in: Wilkinsburg ~75%, Penn Hills ~40%, Braddock ~75%, North Braddock ~40% Swissvale ~25%, McKeesport ~40%, Homestead ~50%, Rankin ~75%... these are rough guesses, but I bet I'm not too far off. These are basically city neighborhoods.

Like all things in Pittsburgh, you can experience dramatically different environments depending on which side of a hill or river you are on.

As eschaton mentions, metro numbers really do not tell an accurate story about the Pittsburgh region, at least in terms of the black population prominence.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Not really, though.

I think people are forgetting that these are race and density maps. So a denser area will look different than a less dense area even if they're racially similar.

If you look at 8 Mile, the entire western half is overwhelmingly black, on both sides, and well into suburbia. The eastern half, no, but these are 2010 maps. The largest black increase/white decrease in Metro Detroit over the past decade has been southern Macomb county, so the racial distribution on the 2020 map will largely look the same on both sides of 8 mile.

But the map will still look kinda different on either side of 8 mile, because the density drops as you get north of 8 mile, and especially on the western (more affluent, woodsy, hilly) side. Southfield MI has 90%+ black census tracts that are almost rural-looking, yet a mile from Detroit proper.

Detroit itself has tons of areas that appear rural, so it's hard to imagine density dropping off in the suburbs. Especially on the east side, where outside of a small (but beautiful) intact part of Indian Village, the entire rest of the area is quasi-rural urban prairies until you hit the Grosse Pointes.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by pj3000

A high percentage of blacks in Pittsburgh live just outside of city limits in urban and older suburban municipalities like Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, Swissvale, Braddock, McKees Rocks, Homestead, and other Mon Valley towns.

If you included bordering and close-in places like these, the “city” black percentage would be significantly higher. This really results in an inaccurate understanding of the presence of the black population in Pittsburgh.

For example, the black population in: Wilkinsburg ~75%, Penn Hills ~40%, Braddock ~75%, North Braddock ~40% Swissvale ~25%, McKeesport ~40%, Homestead ~50%, Rankin ~75%... these are rough guesses, but I bet I'm not too far off. These are basically city neighborhoods.

Like all things in Pittsburgh, you can experience dramatically different environments depending on which side of a hill or river you are on.

As eschaton mentions, metro numbers really do not tell an accurate story about the Pittsburgh region, at least in terms of the black population prominence.

Yeah, some time around 2010 I believe it shifted to where the majority of the black population of Allegheny County is outside of the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is still blacker than the county as a whole, but because about 3/4ths of the county population are in the "suburbs" there's more black people out there in absolute numbers.

This trend has continued very strongly in the current decade as well. Turtle Creek Valley boroughs like East Pittsburgh, Wilmerding, and Pitcairn have rapidly rising black populations.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Detroit itself has tons of areas that appear rural, so it's hard to imagine density dropping off in the suburbs. Especially on the east side, where outside of a small (but beautiful) intact part of Indian Village, the entire rest of the area is quasi-rural urban prairies until you hit the Grosse Pointes.

There's nothing in Detroit that really looks "rural". There are bombed-out, near-empty parts, but on a grid, with sidewalks, pedestrians, utilities, bus stops, and random structures. It looks more like a post-calamity city.

In Southfield, MI, just past the city line, there are quasi-rural neighborhoods, the type common in the Eastern U.S. Multi-acre, woodsy lots, mid-century dwellings, often on well water and septic. Obviously no sidewalks or pedestrian accommodations. But some of these tracts are 90%+ black, same as across 8 Mile in Detroit proper.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's nothing in Detroit that really looks "rural". There are bombed-out, near-empty parts, but on a grid, with sidewalks, pedestrians, utilities, bus stops, and random structures. It looks more like a post-calamity city.

In Southfield, MI, just past the city line, there are quasi-rural neighborhoods, the type common in the Eastern U.S. Multi-acre, woodsy lots, mid-century dwellings, often on well water and septic. Obviously no sidewalks or pedestrian accommodations. But some of these tracts are 90%+ black, same as across 8 Mile in Detroit proper.

I can't really think of any parts of Southfield that I would call "rural", but it's definitely designed to be post-war suburban. I think it's the least dense of all the municipalities that directly border the city of Detroit.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I can't really think of any parts that I would call "rural", but it's definitely designed to be post-war suburban. I think it's the least dense of all the municipalities that directly border the city of Detroit.

Western Southfield, west of Telegraph Rd, is full of mid-century homes on large wooded lots, along the Rouge River & tributaries. Demographically the same as the rest of Southfield (majority black & middle class) but very different appearance.

Neighborhoods like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4585...7i16384!8i8192

But yeah, most of Southfield just has a typical postwar sprawl 1960's feel.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by ilcapo

Out of curiosity:

Is there a specific reason why US keeps track of race or is it just out of tradition?

I know alot of the big multicultural countries such as Brazil, England and Canada does it too.

But most countries doesn't.

Especially because the US is so mixed, im having difficulties to understand why this is still relevant.

I find these maps intresting and beneficial but only for my personal interests.

Sometimes you will meet somebody who is visiting the U.S. for the first time, especially from Asia, and they are often taken aback by how wildly eclectic pretty much everywhere is. Americans from the interior are always struck by how diverse New York City is but anywhere in the Midwest is like New York City to anyone from a country like Japan or Korea.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's nothing in Detroit that really looks "rural". There are bombed-out, near-empty parts, but on a grid, with sidewalks, pedestrians, utilities, bus stops, and random structures. It looks more like a post-calamity city.

In Southfield, MI, just past the city line, there are quasi-rural neighborhoods, the type common in the Eastern U.S. Multi-acre, woodsy lots, mid-century dwellings, often on well water and septic. Obviously no sidewalks or pedestrian accommodations. But some of these tracts are 90%+ black, same as across 8 Mile in Detroit proper.

I think parts of the bombed out areas definitely look rural:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3690...7i16384!8i8192

I hear what you're saying, but it seems like splitting hairs to say there aren't vast areas within the city of Detroit that at least appear pretty rural. They might have traces of crumbling sidewalks and have some semblance of a grid remaining, but they look more like the Mississippi Delta than a city neighborhood.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ilcapo

Out of curiosity:

Is there a specific reason why US keeps track of race or is it just out of tradition?

I know alot of the big multicultural countries such as Brazil, England and Canada does it too.

But most countries doesn't.

Especially because the US is so mixed, im having difficulties to understand why this is still relevant.

I find these maps intresting and beneficial but only for my personal interests.

It's because of the Civil Rights laws that bar certain forms of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or disabilities. They track the data to measure compliance with laws and also to detect discriminatory practices.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i mean, that's not a ton lower than chicago's 29.2% for the same demo, and nobody ever thinks of chicago as not having a large black population.

Because about 90% of the mass media "news" that the rest of the country gets is about blacks killing blacks on Chicago's South Side. It's like nothing ever happens elsewhere in the city unless there's a paralyzing snowstorm or a killer heatwave.

[Pedestrian]

San Francisco is a strange place, racially speaking. The city is about 5% black. Yet the police Chief is black. The Mayor is black. Several department heads are black (and a few those were recently forced to resign as a result of an FBI graft investigation) as are several school board members and the school board itself is obsessed with race, wanting to rename 44 city schools because the existing names are associated with bigots (including one for current CA Senator Dianne Feinstein and one for poor old Abe Lincoln). How did they decide these people were bigots? They checked Wikipedia of course. They've hit a stumbling block, though--3 of the board members are facing a recall vote including one black woman who is herself being pilloried for anti-Asian social media postings (most hate crimes of one race on another in the Bay Area are black on Asian).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Because about 90% of the mass media "news" that the rest of the country gets is about blacks killing blacks on Chicago's South Side.

and they can't even get that part of the story right as the west side ghetto is even more violent than the south side, on a proportional basis.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Francisco is a strange place, racially speaking. The city is about 5% black. Yet the police Chief is black. The Mayor is black. Several department heads are black (and a few those were recently forced to resign as a result of an FBI graft investigation) as are several school board members and the school board itself is obsessed with race, wanting to rename 44 city schools because the existing names are associated with bigots (including one for current CA Senator Dianne Feinstein and one for poor old Abe Lincoln). How did they decide these people were bigots? They checked Wikipedia of course. They've hit a stumbling block, though--3 of the board members are facing a recall vote including one black woman who is herself being pilloried for anti-Asian social media postings (most hate crimes of one race on another in the Bay Area are black on Asian).

San Francisco's population has gotten much less black than it was in the past. In 1970, the city was +13% black, with about 96k black residents. In 2010, the city was 6% black, with about 49k black residents.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

San Francisco's population has gotten much less black than it was in the past. In 1970, the city was +13% black, with about 96k black residents. In 2010, the city was 6% black, with about 49k black residents.

There were few blacks until WW II (a few did come at the end of the Civil War). During the war, since the military was hostile to blacks, they filled up the war production industries and plenty came west to work at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, turning Bayview Hunter's Point into one of San Francisco's 2 predominantly black neighborhoods. The other, the Western Addition, was bulldozed in a major way in the 1960s in the name of "urban renewal". That area previously had been a sort of west coast Harlem with an active jazz music scene but the residents were, like the rest of the city, mostly renters. In Bayview many owned their homes and, like everyone else, they have sold out as those homes became more valuable. The current black population still mostly lives in those 2 neighborhoods but many live in public housing that was built in both. Some in Bayview are still homeowners and didn't join their fellows in moving to the suburbs or Oakland. Our current Mayor proudly makes it a campaign issue that she was raised in the Western Addition "projects".