See Which American Cities Are Racially Integrated

A fellow named Eric Fischer has created fascinating maps that show the extent to which different American cities are, or are not, racially integrated. Each dot in these maps represents 25 people. The dots are color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green. The example above is the infamously segregated Detroit, with a dramatic separation between black and white.

Here's San Francisco. Along with being generally more integrated, it also has many more Asians, as evidenced by all the green.

---

Here's New York, where the incredible density of the city is the most salient feature:

And here's Los Angeles, characterized by a large Latino population:

Here's an interesting question: What do we, as a society, want to see in maps like this? I think it's safe to say that the clear separation of races in Detroit is a symptom (or cause) of serious social problems. At the same time, it seems unrealistic to expect perfect integration and it's unclear if we should want that anyway. It's great that our cities have vibrant ethnic neighborhoods.

The data for these maps comes from the 2000 census. There's more information about the maps at Fast Company, and Fischer's complete Flickr set of maps here.