El Paso

Planners in El Paso wanted better insights into economic segregation in their area in order to take more comprehensive approaches to delivering equitable outcomes.

When it comes to understanding segregation, it’s common to look at where people live, but housing only tells part of the story. People work, shop, and socialize in ways that are influenced by segregation in the built environment. It’s easy to miss important dynamics in a city if decisions are based primarily on where groups of people reside. Unfortunately, the sparsity of data, plus constraints on time and staffing, means planners are forced to rely on what is consistently available to them: residential data.

Planners in El Paso used several components of population data from Replica’s Places tool to look at how economic segregation shows up in the workforce. They downloaded income data and worker location data, layering them together in their preferred mapping tool.

The result allowed planners to see where economic segregation occurred among residential groups, and also to visually display how low-income jobs are concentrated in a few areas around the city.