These three maps are pretty self explanatory, perhaps with the slight exception of the third one, which shows the 300-plus cities color-coded and ranked from most racial and ethnically diverse to least.
This series of maps comes from serial data analysis website WalletHub, whose research work we’ve featured many times before and whose findings can sometimes lack nuance. But in the case of comparing the relative diversities of places across America, WalletHub effectively used Portland to represent Maine, so if anything, the state likely appears more diverse in the illustrative maps than it really is.
Portland is 84 percent non-Hispanic white according to U.S. Census Bureau figures, while the state of Maine overall is around 94 percent.
To reach the ranking conclusions illustrated in the third map above, WalletHub assigned numerical values to represent each city’s racial and ethnic diversity, language diversity and “region of birth” diversity (all based on Census data), then ran those figures through a formula.
The numbers below represent those used in creation of the second map above.
In the overall ranking, Portland was placed No. 285 out of 313 cities in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. Maine’s largest city placed No. 96 out of the 112 “small” cities — defined as those with fewer than 100,000 people — included in the data crunch.
Maine’s northern New England neighbors didn’t rank much higher in the list, with the two New Hampshire cities of Nashua and Manchester ranking No. 201 and 255, respectively, and Vermont cities apparently being left out of the conversation entirely.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most diverse cities in New England were Boston and nearby Lynn, Massachusetts, which ranked No. 21 and 20, respectively, overall.
The most diverse city in anywhere in the country, at least by these calculations, was Gaithersburg, Maryland. Laredo, Texas, came in at the end, placing 313th out of the 313 cities considered.
