When most folks think diversity in Florida, Miami is usually the go-to city. After all, the 305 is a melting pot of Hispanic and Haitian cultures in a big way.
But those folks would be wrong.
Because, thanks to a recent study by WalletHub, turns out Fort Lauderdale is the most diverse city in Florida.
Boom? Boom.
WalletHub looked into the demographic profiles of the most populated cities in the United States — 230 of them — and applied the Herfindahl Index (HIH) method to tally the scores. The HIH method basically looks at economics and other social sciences, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, languages, and occupation, as a measure of diversity.
From there, the study took that info to determine final rankings by tallying each city's scores in four major diversity categories: cities with the most and least economic class diversity, ethno-racial and linguistic diversity, diversified economies, and household diversity.
According to the final tally, California finished high, with Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego, Anaheim, and Sacramento finishing in the overall rankings' top five.
Fort Lauderdale finished ranked 23rd on the list. Not great, but not horrible either. More important, though, it beat out the other major cities in the Sunshine State in the four categories, including Tampa, Port St. Lucie, Hialeah, Orlando, and yes, Miami (which came in a distant second, at 39).
Fort Lauderdale scored best in the Economic Class Diversity category but needs help in the Household Diversity cat. Also, Miami seems to have smoked Fort Lauderdale in the Diversified Economies and Household Diversity categories.
Source: WalletHub
Still, it's a big deal seeing Fort Lauderdale leading the pack in Florida (it has been a bit of a rough year, what with the homeless feeding laws and racist-cop things lingering).
And you can add this to the lists that include the second most exciting place in Florida, the sexiest midsized city in America, the physically most attractive city, and fifth greenest city in America as reasons why Fort Lauderdale kicks all of the ass.
