Ethnic Communities and Economic Sustainability

Abstract

This paper sets out to examine the relationship between economically sustainable places and ethnic communities. Using simple and easily repeated GIS processing, we examined if on a citywide scale ethnic communities were located in economically sustainable areas. The ever changing nature of sustainability combined with the struggles to establish broader sustainability context has limited the fined grained comparisons between sustainable economics and ethnic communities. The research questions were tackled by using modified version of a previously established economic sustainability index and overlaying that with an all generalized ethnic community classification system at the census tract level, a very pinpoint level of analysis. Classifying ethnic communities through based on percent of ethnic groups varied based on proximity to city center compared to an economic sustainability index composed of factors that address economic success and economic diversity. Results show a negative relationship between ethnic communities and sustainable economies.