DEMOGRAPHICS

Metropolitan Diversity: Philadelphia, 2000-2010

By Stephanie Czekalinski and

Updated: September 25, 2012 | 11:46 a.m.
September 20, 2012 | 2:20 p.m.

View Maps of 12 Featured Cities: The dozen cities selected represent metro areas with very visible demographic change. They are: Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., Seattle, and St. Louis.

Full Report (pdf): "America's Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges" by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity.

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Between 2000 and 2010, several suburban areas surrounding Philadelphia’s center city went from largely white (more than 80 percent) to diverse (20 to 60 percent of the people living there were not white.)

The change in Philadelphia's suburbs was emblematic of demographic changes sweeping the nation. A greater share of those living in the metro area were living in diverse suburbs the first decade of the new century. In 2000, 13 percent of Philly’s metro area population were living in communities considered diverse. By 2010, that share had grown to 25 percent. By contrast, the share of those living in predominantly white suburbs shrank from 51 percent to 38 percent. 

In the past decade, the city's population grew slightly to 5.25 million, up about 4 percent, the Philadelphia data summary (pdf) shows.

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