Global Neighborhoods' Contribution to Declining Residential Segregation

Legal and policy analysts focus on the variety of efforts to reduce racial and ethnic segregation and their impact. This study shows that independent population shifts, responding to the increasing diversity of the metropolitan population, are having large impacts that need to be taken into account. Neighborhoods where blacks and whites live in integrated settings alongside Hispanics and Asians represent a major and growing phenomenon in the United States. These "global neighborhoods" serve as an important counterweight to persisting segregation and white flight from diverse neighborhoods. In all parts of the country we show that there have substantial reductions between 1980 and 2010 in the numbers of all-white neighborhoods and corresponding growth in diverse neighborhood types.