Neighborhood Integration: Temporality and Social Fracture

Abstract: This study focuses on two methodological aspects of neighborhood integration measurement: temporal variations and choice of demographic units. In the first case, I use a unified census tract database from 1940 to 1990 to examine the changing patterns of integration in Los Angeles County. In this section, I illustrate that use of the Entropy Index for integration classification may produce results that are in tune with the historical demography of a given metropolitan area. In the second case, I use a cluster analysis technique to illustrate the spatial fragmentation of racial and ethnic subgroups compared to the larger demographic units. This analysis suggests that spatial associations do not reflect the singularity of demographic nomenclatures such as those assigned to Latinos and Asian subgroups.