San Francisco Chronicle map ranks Bay Area census tracts by economic diversity

The San Francisco Chronicle on March 2, 2026 published an interactive map and accompanying analysis that ranks Bay Area census tracts by "economic diversity," quoting the project as "the degree to which a tract contains a mixture of incomes rather than being dominated by either high earners or" — a sentence that is truncated in the published fragment. The piece is credited to reporters Aseem Shukla and Harsha Devulapalli and is presented as an interactive data project for readers to explore neighborhood income mixes across the Bay Area.

The Chronicle's materials reviewed for this article describe the map's purpose as ranking census tracts by economic diversity but do not include the full definition, the underlying metric, or the data years used. The supplied excerpts do not provide a URL to the interactive map, downloadable tables of tract scores, or examples of the top-ranked and bottom-ranked census tracts; those methodological details are flagged in the research notes as critical missing information for independent analysis.

The Chronicle promoted the project on its social account, with a post that the notes record as "San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle). 849 views. Are there any places ... This map ranks places in the Bay Area. sfchronicle.com. 2." Local discussion appears to have followed: a Reddit post in r/sanfrancisco referenced a related Chronicle neighborhood map under the title "Map shows which S.F. neighborhoods send the most kids to private school - SF Chronicle," suggesting the newsroom has produced multiple neighborhood-focused interactive projects.

Absent the Chronicle's documented methodology and tract-level rankings, it is not possible to assess which San Francisco census tracts show the highest or lowest economic diversity, or how the map treats margins of error for small-sample tracts. The research notes compiled alongside the Chronicle excerpts specifically list the unanswered items that matter to policymakers and community groups: the exact metric used to calculate economic diversity, the Census or American Community Survey years feeding the analysis, whether the map covers the nine-county Bay Area or a narrower geography, and whether the underlying dataset is downloadable for independent review.

For local planners, housing advocates, and neighborhood groups seeking to translate an interactive rank into action, those technical details will determine how reliably the map can inform zoning, affordable housing targeting, or transit investment. The Chronicle authors Aseem Shukla and Harsha Devulapalli are named on the project and are the obvious sources for the missing documentation; the research notes accompanying this report list contacting them and obtaining the dataset and methodology as the priority next steps. Until the Chronicle's full methodology and tract rankings are publicly available, the map will be useful for prompting questions about neighborhood income mix but will remain limited as a source for rigorous policy analysis.