When one looks at census data for San Francisco, one finds that the richer it got the less white it became. The number of Asian Americans and Mexican Americans increased significantly from 1980 to 2010, and the city is now minority-majority. What went into sharp decline over this time is the black American population, which had its peak in the early 70s, the city's revolutionary moment, with nearly 100,000 in a city of 700,000—it's now below 50,000 in a city of 800,000.

Seattle still has a robust white majority, and it's unlikely that will change in the near future. Nevertheless, there are neighborhoods in South Seattle that boast world-class diversity demographics. But here is the thing that should worry us all in Seattle. This diversity is more and more moving to edge of the city and spilling into the emptiness of the suburbs. Indeed, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was right to leave downtown (a handsome building) in 2004 for a new facility in Tukwila (a very ugly building). That's where the kinds of people it provides good and bad news to are increasingly found.

This is a national trend. Suburbs are diversifying. What is distressing about this is it's happening at the same time that suburbs are in decline. Indeed, a reason for the demographic shift in these zones of American nothingness is precisely this decline—the homes there are cheaper. But it is such folly to bleed our city's cultural richness (such as is found in my neighborhood, Columbia City—PDF) into areas that are cultural wastelands. Worst of all, suburbs are designed to disconnect rather connect individuals (what precisely new urbanism is a response to). By design, they impede cultural and social flourishing. They indeed deadened a whole generation of white Americans. We can say with confidence that nothing of cultural significance has ever come out of these black holes of the human soul. One fears that what the suburbs did to so many white Americans, they will do to its new occupants. Even lively light can't escape the deadness of a black hole.