How can diversity be quantified?

2015-08-12T13:40:00-04:00

At a macro level, Chicago is quite diverse. At a neighborhood level, it isn’t.

How can a city be both diverse and segregated? In Chicago's case, the city is home to every major racial/ethnic group, but these groups rarely tend to live together in the same neighborhoods. In fact, on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level, Chicago has one of the higher residential segregation rates of major metropolitan cities in the U.S. Even Los Angeles, long derided for being an archipelago of neighborhoods with no identifiable urban connective tissue or center, has a higher rate of residential integration than Chicago. Nate Silver's article asks us to question the metrics of diversity and segregation, especially in terms of urban planning: should those metrics be defined by where people live, where they work, or simply by the overarching boundaries of the city limits? Good question(s).

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How can diversity be quantified?