Wednesday, May 05, 2021

The Brussels Melting Pot

20% of all migrants in the world live in just 20 cities. One of those cities is Brussels. In fact Brussels has the second  highest percentage of foreign born residents of all the cities in the world - after Dubai. 

Brussels has 2.1 million inhabitants. Around 6 in every 10 of them were born abroad. About 184 different nationalities make up the population of Brussels. Like in many cities people of the same nationality often live in the same neighborhoods and communities. You can explore where Brussels' foreign born communities live in the Brussels - A Lovely Melting Pot data visualization. 

Brussels - A Lovely Melting Pot includes a number of small multiple dot maps showing the geographical distribution of some of the different nationalities living in the city. The interactive data visualization also includes a single dot map showing all the nationalities on one map. This combined map shows that the foreign nationals living in southeast Brussels are mainly from the other EU countries. African foreign nationals tend to live in the northwest of the city and Turkish foreign nationals live in the north. 

Brussels - A Lovely Melting Pot doesn't include any economic data. It would be interesting to compare the geographical distribution of foreign nationals with economic indicators, such as average incomes and property prices. While looking at the overall distribution of where different nationalities live in Brussels I can't help making some assumptions about where the city's richest and poorest neighborhoods are located.

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