Diversity and Segregation in Metropolitan Contexts: Los Angeles as a Paradigm for Our Changing Ethnic World

William A. V. Clark, University of California, Los Angeles
Bo Malmberg, Stockholm University
John Östh, Uppsala University

Los Angeles can be seen as a metaphor for the kinds of changes which are occurring in the large metropolitan areas of the United States and global cities more generally. New immigrants are changing the ethnic patterns of neighborhoods and communities and the old patterns of black white segregation are increasingly a picture of the past. In this paper we provide a variant of a nearest neighbor approach and a statistic SI (Spatial Isolation) and a methodology (Equipop) to map, graph and evaluate the likelihood of individuals meeting other similar race individuals or of meeting individuals of a different ethnicity, income level or socio-economic status more generally. The results of a new measure of the spatial patterns of segregation reveal more complex patterns of ethnic segregation, declining levels of segregation and, as harbingers of the future, changes in the patterns of mixed race households in interstitial areas in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area.