Diversity is fundamental to what makes cities great. Ideally, people from different backgrounds and perspectives live together, creating new businesses, solving big problems and enjoying each other's cultures and traditions. Among the major American cities, Boston has long had a reputation as a white city. However, this has changed rapidly in recent years.
Boston is now the sixth most diverse city in the U.S. According to new census data released this month. Boston remains one of the last cities in the Northeast to ever elect a mayor other than a white man; but the Boston City Council is now dominated by women and people of color, and the four candidates in this fall's mayoral election are all women of color. But the proportion of black people in the city has declined at a faster rate than its white population.
Although predominantly white for most of the 20th century, Boston still had some diversity in this earlier era. In the cities and towns around Boston, the black population has increased by 13 percent, while the white population is down 4 percent. However, in the 21st century, the city has experienced significant gentrification, during which rich whites have moved to areas that were not previously white. Boston had black, Asian and Latino neighborhoods of modest size, and there was ethnic diversity within the white population (e.
