10 MD Cities Rank Among The Most Ethnically Diverse In U.S.

MARYLAND — Four Maryland communities were ranked among the nation's top 10 most ethnically diverse cities, and ten in total made the list, according to a report released by financial website WalletHub.

WalletHub recently compared more than 500 of the largest cities in the U.S. and ranked them based on three factors: ethnic diversity, including ethnicity and race, language, and birthplace.

Germantown ranked No. 1 and Gaithersburg ranked as the third most culturally diverse city among all communities in the United States with an ethnic diversity score of 72.59. Gaithersburg was ranked No. 2 in the small city category for communities with populations under 100,000.

“Gaithersburg is a wonderfully diverse community, and we’re proud to foster an atmosphere of inclusion that welcomes all,” said Mayor Jud Ashman in a statement. “It is a great honor to once again rank highly on this list, and it reinforces that we must continue to offer educational, economic, social, recreational, and cultural opportunities for all.”

Four of the top ten most culturally diverse cities in the country are in Maryland, including Germantown, Gaithersburg, Silver Spring at No. 4, and Rockville at No. 8.

The U.S. today is a melting pot of cultures, thanks to increasing ethnic and racial diversification. If the trend continues, America will be more diverse than ever by 2045, at which point no single ethnic group will constitute the majority in the U.S. for the first time, the Census Bureau says.

Other Maryland cities on the list are:

• No. 62 Columbia
• No. 68 Ellicott City
• No. 90 Frederick
• No. 187 Glen Burnie
• No. 202 Waldorf
• No. 267 Baltimore

To learn more about the study and how other communities ranked, read WalletHub’s 2023 Most & Least Ethnically Diverse Cities in the U.S. report here.

Methodology

In order to determine the most ethnically diverse places in America, WalletHub compared 501 of the most populated U.S. cities across three key metrics: 1) Ethnoracial Diversity, 2) Linguistic Diversity and 3) Birthplace Diversity. Our data set, each metric’s subcomponents and its corresponding weight are listed below. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the most ethnic diversity.

They then determined city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its “Ethnic Diversity Score” and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.

Each city in our sample refers to city proper and excludes the surrounding metro area. Wallethub limited its sample to no more than 10 cities from each state and categorized them according to population size.

This analysis was conducted using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index method, which is a commonly accepted measurement of market concentration that also works effectively as a general-purpose measure of diversity.