By PublicSource staff
Diversity is a new buzzword in Pittsburgh. And its 90 neighborhoods are often the city’s claim to it—that they are strong and diverse and together create a welcoming, multifaceted city.
But how diverse is Pittsburgh, really, if we look at it on the neighborhood level?
To answer that question, we used the USA Today Diversity Index and then we—equipped with notebooks and smartphones—went to some neighborhoods to check whether those data points matched perceptions of residents. We asked people what diversity means to them, how diverse and economically stable their neighborhood is and how it has changed over the years.
You can check your own perceptions against data for the neighborhood you live in and find out how racially diverse your neighborhood is and which Pittsburgh neighborhoods are more segregated.
The Index measures the chance that two random people from a neighborhood would be from different races. When a neighborhood has a higher diversity score, there is more diversity in that area and the lower the score means less diversity.
For instance, Shadyside has a diversity score of 50. That means if we picked two random people from Shadyside, there is a 50 percent chance that they would be of different races.
But, we’re not Los Angeles or New York City when it comes to diversity. So when you’re looking at the map, the diversity you see is relative to other Pittsburgh neighborhoods, not other cities.
More diverse places like Philadelphia or New York City score around 70 on the diversity scale. Pittsburgh scores 54 and areas like Westmoreland and Butler counties score around 10.
Explore the map below by clicking on a specific neighborhood and read the entire article in PublicSource to see what people have to say about living in the most diverse and least diverse neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.
This story was written by the staff of PublicSource, a leading investigative news organization, providing Pennsylvania citizens with in-depth information.