Cityscape

Free Press: Michigan's Diversity Growing As Population Growth Lags

October 24, 2014, 7:40 AM

By 2060, the chance that two randomly-selected Michiganders will be of different racial or ethnic backgrounds will increase from 39% to 60%, according to a USA Today Diversity Index which analyzed census data and demographic trends, according to a project published Friday in the Free Press. 

Staffers Patricia Montemurri and Kristi Tanner report that in that time, the state's Hispanic population will more than double, its African-American and Asian population will increase, and six times as many Michiganders will identify themselves as multiracial, according to USA Today projections.

Among the findings:

• Even as the state becomes more diverse, its population will not grow as fast as many other states.

• Population trends by mid-century will make Michigan's I-94 corridor a distinctive, multihued bracelet of racial and ethnic diversity around the wrist of the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula.

• By the mid-2020s, there will be as many African Americans living in the Detroit suburbs than who live in the Motor City, where currently more than 8 out of 10 residents are black. 

• Some 23% of metro Detroit residents live in integrated communities, a nearly eightfold increase from 3% of communities. A racially-diverse community, according to the study, applies to municipalities that are between 20% to 60% minority.

• Among racially-diverse suburbs in southeastern Michigan now are Novi, Troy, Farmington Hills, Eastpointe, Harper Woods, Oak Park, Redford Township, Taylor, Warren, Westland, West Bloomfield and Wixom. (Some of those cities, including Harper Woods and Eastpointe, appear to be gradually resegregating from mostly white to mostly black.)

An interactive map at the bottom of the Free Press story shows the diversity index of each of the nation's counties. Moving a cursor across southeast Michigan shows considerable diversity, but nothing like that of many of the country's other major cities. 


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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