Sprinkling a little color on census tracts that came up majority Anglo, majority Hispanic, majority African-American, and those where no group is in the majority, blogger and consultant Greg Wythe finds that last category has grown considerably in Harris County over the last 10 years. A good chunk of what was a solid-red block around Cypress and northwest Houston, for example, has gone multicultural yellow in the 2010 map. Wythe says the 2010 Census didn’t identify any majority-Asian census tracts — though 3 of them came up in the 40-to-45-percent range. He also put together these interactive versions of the same maps, so you can zoom in and around your own favorite spots:
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Harris County 2000:
and Harris County in 2010, from the latest Census data:
If you’re thinking these changes will soon alter Harris County’s political landscape, you might want to take a look at a similar map Wythe put together from the 2010 census data that counts only the citizen voting-age population. It looks a lot more like the 2000 map above:
- The Scope of Harris County’s Demographic Change and Three More Views of Harris County Demographics [Greg’s Opinion]
- Previously on Swamplot: Houston to Census Bureau: Count Again, New 2010 Census Numbers Document Houston’s Trickle-In Decade
Maps: Greg Wythe
Very interesting, but really nothing one couldn’t derive from driving around Houston and the burbs. Spring/Klein/Tomball/Cypress is a perfect example, used to be almost exclusively Caucasian, my high school was 94% Caucasian in 1993, now it’s down to 70%. I think there is a pretty hefty amount of white flight from the suburbs back into town/inner loop, which of course displaces some of other Ethnicities, and perhaps the suburbs offer better living/schools/etc. Just my 2 cents on the finer points of gentrification..
Does this mean we are beginning to form a culturally homogenized super-community, rather than a fragmented patchwork quilt of widely divergent, geographically isolated sub-communities? Like it or not, America’s melting pot effect is stronger than ever.
Obviously, once solidly hispanic neighborhoods inside the loop like the West End are becoming gentrified. But, I think the bulk of the “white flight” is to the newer burbs with the bigger houses (Sugar Land, Woodlands, Cy___,. etc) as evidenced by the massive growth on the census numbers.