So, how ethnically diverse is your neighborhood?

[Syt]

I live in the 10th district of Vienna, which is the largest, population wise (>10% of Viennese live here), and it's stretching from the inner city to the outskirts. I live closer to the center.

The 10th district has a history of being a workers district, and a focus for immigrants. Austrian statistic has different ways of counting immigrants.

For one, there's the people holding a foreign passport. For Vienna the share is 22.3%.

Next, there's the people who were born abroad. Their share is 31.1%.

Finally, there's the number of people with "migrant background", which counts people born abroad, and people who have at least one parent born abroad: 34.6%.

Most migrants are from (in order): Serbia/Montenegro, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

You can get an idea how migrants are distributed in Vienna by this map (dated 2010, from the left leaning Der Standard newspaper; it focuses on Turks but has total numbers, too. The white on black number is the district number (1-23), the red number is the absolute number of Turkish people, yellow is percentage of people with Turkish background, blue is total amount of migrants. The map uses the second definition of migrants I listed above).



Anyways, my area of town is pretty diverse. I guess less than half dicussions I hear in the street are not in German but in a Slavic language or Turkish. It's pretty common for supermarket cashiers to talk to customers in Serbian. There's a large number of Turkish bakeries, fast food joints etc. And cafés/bars for ex-yugos. On Friday afernoon, droves of Turkish families are out and about. In my apartment building are Austrians, Germans (me), Turks, Serbs, a black family and a Chinese family.

Most of the posters for events (usually a musician of some sort playing in a bar or something) are either in Turkish or in Serbian/Croatian. And there's been several Turkish language only promotions for cell phone contracts in our district's main shopping street.

And it all works quite well. Most of the people just want to do their thing and live their lives. The youth - well, it doesn't matter if you are Austrian, German or Turkish or Serbian, if you're a jackass teen, you're a jackass teen. I don't think things are as peachy as the left wingers want to make us believe (e.g. some migrant kids are deficient in their German skills when first coming to school - mostly Turks, the Ex-Yugos tend to adapt better and become bilingual, using Serbian/Croatian in their private circles, but having good grasp of German as well), but not as bad as the right wingers want to make us think, either (see comment about Youths above).

In a way it feels a bit like a continuation of the Habsburg days, when Vienna was a melting pot for people from all over the Empire (many "traditional" Viennese names are distinctly Czech or Slovak or Hungarian).

Still, it's pretty noticeable that most cultures don't mix much. Austrians mostly stick with Austrians, Turks with Turks, Serbs with Serbs. Any crossover usually happens through work or school or university. I think that's the one really regrettable part.

Coming from the Holstein countryside, though, from small towns that have little diversity, and dwindling economic relevance (I've seen videos of my old hometowns, and the deterioration is depressing), it feels good to live in a (comparably) vibrant city that grows, constantly changes and attracts people from ll walks of life.

So, how are things in your part of town?

[fhdz]

My neighborhood is super white. SFG's kids are the darkest folks on the street. There's also a larger-than-average Jewish population around here.

Southwest Portland is not what would be considered one of the most ethnically diverse parts of town.

[crazy canuck]

I am not sure what the statstical breakdown is but Vancouver is a pretty diverse community.

[MadImmortalMan]

I'm guessing my town is roughly 5% black, 35% hispanic, 10% asian, 50% white. Total guess without looking it up.

[katmai]

I live in downtown Anchorage. The City is barely over 100 years old, heck I live on 10th ave and this was the outskirts of town back when my house was built in 1941
The neighborhood is known as Fairview and is Predominately white, but fair share of Alaskan Natives, Filipino, and Latinos with smattering of African-American in this area.

[Malthus]

Toronto is very ethnically diverse.

My immediate neighbourhood, less so. 

[CountDeMoney]

It's a Tarzan movie around here.

[Zanza]

The neighbourhood I live in apparently has 28.5% foreigners, but used to have 34% in 2000. I guess the house I live in has a slightly higher ratio, maybe 40% of the names sound foreign.

The city as a whole has 21.8% foreigners. No idea about the percentage of naturalized people, there is no extra statistic for that.

The house I live in has a Kebab shop in the basement. My hairdresser, the cleaning lady, the cashiers in the supermarket, my dentist, my landlord etc. all have family roots abroad. In my white collar office job, almost everybody is German.  

[Syt]

Bonus questions for the Americans: how many first or second generation immigrants are in your area?

[Martinus]

I thought we already dealt with that question indirectly in "what social class are you" thread.

[Grey Fox]

Bonus questions for the Americans: how many first or second generation immigrants are in your area?

Lots. My neighborhood is full of 2nd generation Italian immigrants.

[Syt]

The house I live in has a Kebab shop in the basement.

We have a Turkish youth club in the basement. Across the street is the "Kapadokien Palast", another club for Turkish teens.

My hairdresser, the cleaning lady, the cashiers in the supermarket, my dentist, my landlord etc. all have family roots abroad.

Same here - it's in most service professions I guess. And lots of doctors from abroad. In fact, my dentist is Russian. When my GP was on vacation, an Usama El-Something was his backup.

In my white collar office job, almost everybody is German.

In our office of 15 we have 7 Austrians, 2 Anglo-Canadians, 1 French-Canadian, 1 Scot, 3 Germans, 1 French. At the previous job we had more Austrians, but also a number of people with Balkans background.

[Martinus]

Anyways, my neighbourhood is probably much more ethnically diverse in the streets than in homes, as there are several embassies in the area and our office building (I have a 5 minutes' walk to work, so I both live and work in the same neighbourhood) is opposite the South African embassy.

[MadImmortalMan]

Bonus questions for the Americans: how many first or second generation immigrants are in your area?

Quite a lot. If you count immigrants from other US states, then it's a vast majority. Like 85%.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm guessing my town is roughly 5% black, 35% hispanic, 10% asian, 50% white. Total guess without looking it up.

Probably about the same.