Hispanics now make up nearly a quarter of the city's population. New York City surpassed the 8 million mark on the strength of its surging immigrant population, bringing new vitality and new challenges. As whites continue their flight from Pittsburgh and cities like it, the numbers suggest that part of Pittsburgh's problem is its inability to attract and keep immigrants. In the 1990s, Pittsburgh's Hispanic population grew by 44 percent, with 11,166 Latinos residing in Allegheny County in 2000. Similarly sized Las Vegas had a Hispanic community 25 times the size, numbering 302,143.
Diversity means different things in different places, and on widely varying scales.
Iowa saw a 153 percent increase in its Hispanic population in the 1990s, nearly triple the national average, compared to a jump of 53 percent in Texas, which was slightly below the national average. But in Texas, that means there are now 6.7 million Latinos, in Iowa only 82,000. He's not sure that Atlanta, when figures for Georgia are released, will feel the cultural and linguistic effects of integration. Assimilation always has been a decades-long process for America's waves of immigrants. And the cause and effect of census results don't fit neatly into 10-year cycles.