Fascinating maps show where the most and least diverse parts of the US are
Stepinski also said the map could help social scientists, city officials, and urban planners better understand the racial make-up of America's neighborhoods in order to help make them less segregated.
"People don’t realize that the United States is a diverse country but at the same time is still very segregated," Stepinski told Quartz.
Stepinski said he plans to update the map with new census data in 2020.
But by 2010, parts south of downtown Seattle had become much more diverse.
Stepinski's map also allows users to see changes in a city's diversity over time. In 1990, many neighborhoods in Seattle were divided by race.
About 400 miles south, Malibu and Santa Monica, California, white populations are more likely to live on the coast.
Oakland, California also displays a lot of gray splotches, signifying higher levels of racial diversity than San Francisco.
The map of Las Vegas and Paradise, Nevada also suggests that many of their neighborhoods have residents of multiple races.
Gaithersburg, Maryland and other areas north of Washington, DC are fairly racially diverse, as indicated by the dark grey shading.
New York City's neighborhoods are also pretty segregated by race. Manhattan has a fairly high density of white residents, while the most dense populations of black, Hispanic, and Asian New Yorkers are found in upper Manhattan, the Bronx, and parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Jersey City (located west of Manhattan) does not appear to be as segregated.
Chicago — one of America's most racially segregated cities — is highly siloed by neighborhood. There are distinct pockets of Hispanic and black residents living downtown, while first-ring suburbs have mostly white residents.
As CityLab notes, decades of racial discriminatory housing policies (some of which still persist today) contributed to segregation in Chicago. For example, following WWII, the Federal Housing Administration explicitly denied home loans for black people in Chicago and other cities across the US.
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