A University of California-Berkeley study of racial segregation in housing in the United States found Colorado Springs to be one of the two most residentially racially integrated cities in the country.

The study of 113 cities found only two cities to rank as “integrated” — Colorado Springs and Port St. Lucie, Fla. All the other cities were listed as either “highly segregated” or “low-medium segregated.”

The study also looked at residential racial segregation in 221 metropolitan areas in the United States. The Colorado Springs metro area (El Paso and Teller counties) also was rated as integrated, along with only four other metro areas: Chico, Calif.; Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Fla.; Jacksonville, N.C.; and, again, Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Jacksonville, N.C. is a city near the Camp Lejeune U.S. Marine Corps base.

That Colorado Springs landed on both the city list and the metro area list was significant. It meant that minority home purchasers and renters, mainly African-Americans and Hispanics, found it just as easy to find housing in rural and suburban areas of El Paso and Teller counties as in the city of Colorado Springs proper.

Though the Cal-Berkeley study found Colorado Springs to be residentially well-integrated, it should be noted that other studies have found Colorado Springs to be one of the least diverse cities in the country, meaning the overall numbers of minorities compared to the white population are low. U.S. News found Colorado Springs to be one of the 10 least diverse big cities in the country in 2020.

The Cal-Berkeley study found one area of high residential racial segregation in Colorado Springs in the southeastern part of the city on both sides of Academy Boulevard. That area was counterbalanced, however, by large sections of integrated housing, mainly in the northeastern part of the city as well as in Security and Widefield.

The strong racial integration of housing in the Colorado Springs region stood in sharp contrast with the overall results of the Cal-Berkeley study. Residential racial segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas was found to have increased 23.6 percent from 2010 to 2020. The most residentially racially segregated sections of the nation were the East Coast (New York and Philadelphia), the upper Midwest (Chicago and Detroit), and the West Coast (mainly Los Angeles).

The South was found to have high housing segregation, yet surprisingly not to as great an extent as the East and West coasts and the upper Midwest. The two sections of the nation with the least residential racial segregation, but there was still plenty of it around, were the Rocky Mountain States and the Upper Plains States.

Ranking as one of the two most residentially racially integrated cities in the nation, of course, put Colorado Springs way out in front in the state of Colorado. The Denver metropolitan area was rated highly segregated, as were a number of more rural counties, particularly in southern Colorado. Most of the remainder of the state was graded low-medium segregated where housing was concerned.

Given that the University of California at Berkeley study found housing segregation to be both widespread and increasing in the United States, Colorado Springs stood out as a desirable example of how to do residential racial integration correctly.

After Colorado Springs, Pueblo was the next most residentially integrated community in Colorado.

The Cal-Berkeley researchers made it clear that housing segregation in Colorado mainly affects Hispanic citizens. Significant African-American populations are only found in Colorado Springs and Denver metro. The state’s million-plus Hispanic citizens are widely spread throughout Colorado, however, and reside in segregated communities in both populous and non-populous cities.

The main methodology used by the researchers to measure the extent of housing segregation was called divergence. It calculated the extent to which the proportions of minorities in a particular section of the city compared to the proportions for the entire city.

For instance, if a neighborhood was 17 percent Hispanic and the entire city was 17 percent Hispanic, that neighborhood was defined as Integrated. If the neighborhood numbers and the city numbers “diverged,” that was taken as the measure of housing segregation. For this study, Colorado Springs was defined as 17 percent Hispanic and 5 percent African-American.

The University of California-Berkeley researchers were fascinated that Colorado Springs was one of only two cities that qualified as integrated, and that the Springs was the best-known of the two. The researchers mentioned Colorado Springs high-up in the written text of the study results. They also wrote a short section trying to explain why the city of Colorado Springs had scored this notable achievement. Colorado Springs was one of only 18 cities covered by the study that merited special analysis.

The major reason cited for the integrated housing in Colorado Springs was the large number of military installations in or near the city — Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, Peterson Field, NORAD (North American Air Defense Command), etc.

The study noted that the U.S. military had been racially integrated in 1948 by a presidential executive order. This had occurred just at the time that Colorado Springs was starting to grow rapidly in population, a post-World War II phenomenon in the city. With the military at least officially racially integrated, both those in military service and civilian employees at military bases faced greatly reduced racial discrimination when they went to buy or rent housing in Colorado Springs.

Ten years later, according to the Cal-Berkeley study, the enactment by Congress of the Housing Rights Act of 1968 outlawed discrimination in selling or renting housing, making it even easier for minorities to buy or rent housing anywhere in the city or the surrounding metro area.

The study noted that the military is one of the only sectors of employment in the United States in which “African-Americans and Hispanics aren’t underrepresented, allowing for significant social contact between racial groups. And there is evidence of positive long-term outcomes of these interactions. White military veterans are more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods than their civilian counterparts. Together, the military employs 20 percent of Colorado Springs’ workforce. Military benefits include paid housing allowances and mortgage loans without down payments, which circumvent significant barriers to home ownership.”

The researchers were surprised that a high rate of residential racial integration had occurred in a city that is 83 percent zoned for single-family-only housing. Customarily single-family zoning lowers racial diversity and leads to more segregation, yet Colorado Springs was a clear exception to that phenomenon.

The Cal-Berkeley team were similarly surprised that a city with a strong Republican voting record could rank so high in terms of residential racial integration.

One point the researchers did not note is that Colorado Springs has had two minority mayors. Also the leaders of two of the city’s major educational institutions — the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) and Colorado College — both have minority heritage.

Pike’s Peak. Gorgeous Rocky Mountain scenery. Great skiing nearby. A sunny high-elevation climate. We now must add “residentially racially integrated” to the many wonders of Colorado Springs.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy write about Colorado and national politics. To review the study, google “Roots of Racial Residential Segregation.”