Well this is pretty awesome. It’s aggregate data of the distribution of racial / ethnic groups from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, based on samples from 2005 to 2009. Go ahead and put your own city in there, or, if you’re from my great city, Houston, let’s have a discussion. This is a map I’ll be referring to for years to come in my own work. Sorry for the small sample, my blog format is limiting in this sense, but click on the image above and it’ll open a larger jpg file. Or go to “Mapping America: Every City, Every Block; NY Times article.”
Some quick observations on my part about Houston:
- Whites are largely spread west of the city center, densely populating sections just south of I-10. Accessibility and commuting issues come to mind.
- Blacks appear to be less dispersed throughout the city, and largely clumped together in geographic areas (although the blue makes it hard to tell).
- Hispanics are largely dispersed, although they are also clumped in some areas.
- Asians are the least represented and sprinkled throughout.
- There are some clear racial lines in this city, west and east are pretty clearly defined.
I don’t have conclusions; these are merely opening observations. Observations lead to understanding leads to vision leads to community development leads to change. So we’re just beginning to observe now. Thoughts?
WAYNEPARK.COM 
Here’s a similar map, but it has some notes on it for neighborhoods.
You can also view the original size which is much bigger. This guy has a whole set of all the major U.S. cities.
The racial segregation in Houston isn’t as drastic as it is in Detroit and Chicago, but I’ve found that the ethnic segregation in churches is more drastic down here in the south. In our search for a multi-ethnic church when moving here this summer, we found that there really weren’t many. We visited about 8 churches and researched several more online. All we found were all-white, all-black, all-Chinese, all-Korean, etc. Even the Midwest, where I’ve spent the last 5 years of my life, proved to be more progressive in terms of integration.
yes I’ve seen that set as well; very cool…
I’ve got a similar sense as well; while the city seems a little more dispersed, congregations seem to reflect the “most segregated day of the week” thing. In some ways I think that betrays the deeper undercurrent of prejudices that aren’t so obvious on the surface in TX…
The drive towards a multiethnic congregation in Houston is a noble goal that you and I both share