Let's start with trust. When two people are interacting and they trust each other they are able to have a productive and enjoyable interaction. When there is a lack of trust though, they must move more slowly, feeling they're way carefully until they are able to build the trust necessary to engage effectively. This can take a lot of time and effort.
As we go about our days we engage with many different people. Some we know and some we don't. For the people we know we have an idea of how much we can trust them from previous interactions. That is pretty straight forward. For the people we do not know it gets complicated.
How do we evaluate interaction risk if we do not know a person? We use heuristics. Heuristics is a fancy word for pattern recognition. When we look at a new person we compare them, using all available senses, to patterns (people types) we are familiar with. The more positively familiar they are the more we trust them and the fewer guards we put up in our interaction.
Why does this matter? Well, when an area (town, city, etc.) is populated with people who are identifiable as members of a generally trusted group things move relatively smoothly. Trust is high and good things happen. Alternatively, when there is a lot of unfamiliarity, and therefore distrust, things get cold, guarded, and generally less open.
To make this all a little more practical, a major builder of trust is when you meet someone who has the same cultural values as you. If a town is filled with people who share a common set of cultural norms the collective trust will be high. This is because people know what to expect from each other. This will be strengthened because the people within that culture will generally dress and behave in predictable ways which will help others identify these predictable behaviors.
Ok, so what happens when you have a city that has a very diverse cultural landscape? Well, the more cultural groups present the harder it is for any individual to be familiar enough with them to have an attitude of trust. Therefore it makes the entire city's social interaction to be less inviting or friendly. Guards go up because of the perceived risk.
Does this seem to be the case in real life? Well, in a survey searching for the friendliest cities in the world the top three are Burlington Vermont (1), New Orleans Louisiana (2), and Jackson Wyoming (3).
Burlington Vermont has a population of 42,000 people, and is almost 90% white. Being a small, rural, and ethnically homogeneous city it is very culturally homogeneous. So for Burlingtonites it is easy to welcome anyone with open arms. They are used to being able to trust everyone around them.
New Orleans Louisiana might seem like it breaks the pattern here. It is a lot bigger at 340,000 people and racially it is 60% black, 33% white, and 7% a bunch of other races. That doesn't look homogeneous. Well, that is true. It is racially diverse. However, racial diversity is not the same as cultural diversity. New Orleans has a very distinct and unique culture that sets it apart as unique. That strong local culture encompasses all the racial elements making it a friendly place.
Jackson Wyoming is a differently located mirror of Burlington. It's population is even lower at a hair south of 10,000 people. Being 80% white and a rural ranching community solidifies the cultural consistency. Further more being so small you get to the point where friendships and family make a much smaller percentage of the population to be strangers than most other places.
Now to the unfriendliest cities, and I'll just clump them for brevity because the coincidentally share characteristics. Oakland California (28), Tijuana Mexico (29), and Newark New Jersey (30). All three have very racially diverse populations with the largest demographic group barely breaking 50%. While racial diversity does not necessarily translate into cultural diversity in these cases it does.
Without getting into it in detail here there crime rates follow a similar pattern (New Orleans being a notable exception). The demographics of the safest communities in the country point clearly to cultural homogeneity.
Without making any value judgements of any culture, good or bad, I think it is clear from the data that cultural diversity is not good for anyone. Does that mean that I don't like outsiders and we should stop all those ferners from coming over here? No, not at all. However, it does mean that we should select people to come here who already share some aspects of our culture and who are willing to adapt to and accept the culture they are moving into.
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