American FactFinder

Top Five observations after visiting American FactFinder website: Your source for population, housing, economic, and geographic data.

How fun to look up data about my neighborhood of Highland Park!

I discovered that the Latino population of 4.8% is higher than I would have expected. I wonder if there is some self-segregation is the neighborhood related to what restaurants and grocery stores are selected by people of different races.

I was impressed that the number of white denizens at approx. 23,000 is about equal to that of our black denizens, at approx. 20,000. The neighborhood seems mighty white to me, and I'm glad to know that it is more diverse than it appears. See comment above re. self-segregation.

I was also surprised that our neighborhood only has 5.7% of the population under 5 years of age, since the 'hood is swarming with kids--seemingly so, at least.

Also surprising to me that the average family size is 2.06 members, again since so many of the visible families seem to have two or more children. This might be related to single people or elderly couples socializing less in the neighborhood than the more visible families with young children. Apparently, I have been hanging out in the neighborhood joints frequented by white families with lots of kids!

My thought about race self-segregation may be apropos, as only 1.9% of the population identified as biracial.