Working Paper 09/213-Abstract

Using Local Statistics to Portray Ethnic Residential Segregation in London (PDF, 547kB)

Michael Poulsen, Ron Johnston and James Forrest

Much has been written about ethnic residential segregation in urban areas, almost all of it deploying single-index numbers to measure the degree of segregation. These give very little detailed appreciation of the extent to which different ethnic groups live apart from each other, and where. This paper suggests that a combination of measures derived from local spatial statistics, which identify the geography of clustering, and a typology of residential areas, which describes the population  composition of each area, provides much greater insight into the nature and extent of segregation. Data for London in 2001 illustrate the potential of this approach.