Community Corner
Montgomery Village is Among Maryland's Most Diverse Communities
Interactive map highlights state's most diverse and least diverse areas.
The state's most diverse communities—where there is a more than 75 percent chance, according to the USA Today Diversity Index, that two random residents are of a different race or ethnicity—are clustered between Interstate 270 and Route 50, stretching across county lines from Montgomery Village down to Colmar Manor.
The meat of Maryland's diversity is sandwiched between the Western Maryland mountains and the Eastern Shore, where the state's least diverse towns—100 percent white, in some cases—are mapped.
This map shows Maryland’s 20 most diverse communities (blue icons) and 20 least diverse communities (red icons). Montgomery Village was rated the 20th most diverse community in Maryland, with the following racial breakdown:
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- 49.93 percent White
- 23.82 percent Black
- 10.81 Asian
- 10.74 percent of another race
- 4.70 percent two or more races
- 24.39 percent of Montgomery Village residents consider themselves to be of Hispanic ethnicity.
Adelphi was rated Maryland’s most diverse community. Wheaton came in second.
Jeanne Batalova, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank a Washington think tank, pointed to local policies that create "pull factors," reasons people pick up and move into a community: Better educational and job opportunities, affordable housing and ease of establishing infrastructure.
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Business incentives also make people more likely to act as pioneers, Batalova said.
For immigrants, Batalova said, it is often the case that a few people of a certain racial or ethnic group move into a community, establish themselves and then friends and family follow.
"The [personal] network is perhaps the most powerful driving force," said Batalova.
The interactive map was generated using the USA Today diversity index, which assigns a number between 0 (no diversity) and 100 (total diversity) to signify the chance that two randomly chosen residents of a particular community will be of a different race or ethnicity.
Maryland Newsline's Maite Fernandez contributed to this report.
