[Screwston]

(03-06-2012 10:38 AM)pid='341383 Wrote:  

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/...384174.php




Houston region is now the most diverse in the U.S.

By Jeannie Kever

Updated 11:21 p.m., Monday, March 5, 2012


The Houston region is now the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the country, surpassing New York City.

Two suburbs - Missouri City and Pearland - have become even more diverse than the city of Houston. Other suburbs aren't far behind.

These findings are from a report released Monday by Rice University researchers, based on an analysis of census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010.

"We are a little United Nations," Pearland Mayor Tom Reid said. "You go to one of our neighborhoods, and there will be a person from Nigeria living next to somebody from India, living next to somebody from Mexico and somebody from Louisiana."

The report also found that while residential segregation has dropped over the past 20 years, it remains highest within the city of Houston; most suburban neighborhoods are less racially segregated.

Report co-author Michael Emerson, co-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice, said poverty, aging housing and larger concentrations of minority groups all contribute to continued segregation in Houston.

New neighborhoods often attract people from a range of racial and ethnic groups, he said. "There's no history that says, 'You can't come here.' "

The report covered a five-county area - Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria and Galveston - and was produced by the Kinder Institute and Rice's Hobby Center for the Study of Texas.

Fort Bend County is the most diverse, with Latinos, African-Americans and Asians accounting for almost two-thirds of residents. Montgomery County is the least diverse, with slightly more than one-fourth of the population made up of minorities.

But Emerson said diversity is increasing everywhere, and rapidly.

A comfortable mix

That's not news to people in the suburbs.

Danny Nguyen was born in Vietnam and now runs a real estate business in Missouri City. He's on the City Council, too, where his colleagues include an Indian, two African-Americans and three Anglos.

"Diversity has never been a problem here," Nguyen said. "I love the city. The quality of life. The safety."

For some people, the diversity itself is a draw.

Toni Carter was a reluctant suburbanite, moving to Pearland in 2000 in search of more house for her money. Carter had grown up in Houston and was wary of raising her children in what she feared would be an all-white enclave.

"I wanted them to be comfortable with everybody," she said. "When we were looking at this neighborhood, that was something I had my eye on."

She discovered a mix of people from all over the world.

"I didn't know much about the suburbs," she said. "I expected it to be white-bread land."

Emerson attributed the growth in diversity to a 1965 shift in immigration laws that changed the way visas were granted.

Before that, immigration was dominated by people from Europe. Once the United States began granting equal numbers of visas to every country, immigrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa became dominant.

That shifted the immigrant population in cities all over the country, including other major immigrant gateways such as New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

But Emerson said it had a more pronounced impact on Houston, partly because the city was smaller when the shift began. This allowed the influx of immigrants to play a bigger role in shaping the region's demographics.

Happens 'organically'

"That's a good thing," said Larry Green, elected last fall to represent Houston's newly drawn District K on the City Council. "Diverse communities allow you to think outside the box."

His southwest Houston district is about 42 percent African-American, 32 percent Latino, 19 percent Anglo and 6 percent Asian.

And desegregation is coming, he said.

"You're starting to see African-Americans in traditionally Anglo communities, or Hispanics in traditionally African-American communities," he said. "I think it's going to happen organically, as opposed to the city putting (rules) in place."