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I too share an obsession with demographics, especially relating to such social indicators as age/sex/ethnicity/place of birth/income.etc. I used to be quite interested in the demographics of other nations, like the UK and US as well. Hmm, don't really know what to ask. Is the ethnic profile of your neighbourhood striated by local area? I mean, do some areas have much larger concentrations of certain groups? What's the demographic profile of your community?

Well, this is my community: http://city-data.com/city/Glen-Ridge-New-Jersey.html It's mostly the upper echelon of middle-class, but not "upper middle class" in raw sociological terms, though we do have our representatives of those and some rich people. The houses in my town are older and protected by a "historic district", giving us the third average house age in the country, with most houses being built roughly 1870-1940 and many built in the 1920s or Victorians. Demographically, we're mostly Irish-German and Italian, with some WASP, Jewish, Asian Indian, Polish, South American, and African-American, but in waaay smaller numbers. We're alot less "yuppieish" than the neighboring community of Montclair, I think, which is composed less of native Jerseyites and more of snooty NYC transplants attracted by the train service.

I live next to a few big "ghetto" areas, like East Orange, Newark, etc., which are extremely rundown and crime-ridden and mostly African-American (though Newark has Puerto Rican and Portuguese neighborhoods.) The towns to the east, north, and west of Glen Ridge are largely working-class to middle-class Italian-American, though Bloomfield is divided into a large middle-class Italian-American section and southern sections with Vietnamese, Asian Indian, black, and Hispanic. Clifton is a big mixed city to the north of us with more middle-class to working-class Italian/Irish/Polish, a whole Ukrainian and Polish immigrant neighborhood, an Orthodox Jewish area verging on Passaic, and a HUGE Arabic/Turkish neighborhood including part of South Paterson, an industrial city that along with Passaic is mostly Hispanic, largely Dominican, Puerto Rican, and South American. Other local ethnic communities include Maplewood/South Orange/West Orange/Livingston/Millburn (largely Jewish), sections of the Oranges with big assorted Asian and Subsaharan African/West Indian communities, endless "Little Italies", and Wallington, which is quite Polish. Also, there's an assortment of areas with alot of Brazilian and Portuguese mixed in with working-class Italian/Irish to the immediate east of Newark, near the industrial areas.

Here's the official abs website where you can find all the population stats on Australia http://www.abs.gov.au/, the last census being in 2001 (so we're really outdated), we're due for one this year.

My suburb of Winthrop is rather typical of newer upper-middle class suburbs in the middle suburbs. We're about 13km S of the CBD, in the City of Melville, which has an interesting mix of
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@cpp.nsf/8ca62bfefadf503cca257059000a1d99/a304a3576b8c0f11ca25710a0016adbb!OpenDocument
low and high income neighbourhoods, old and new housing, and ethnic. Our suburb is well known as an 'ethnic enclave' of sorts for South East Asians: Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesian mainly, Indians, and a lesser extent European peoples, largely because we're next to a University. Believe it or not nearly 50% of Winthrop's population was born overseas (in Perth it's about 33%), whereas in neighbouring Willagee this figure drops to about 18%. We're quite a young suburb, with most people in the 32-45 cohort, with few old people. Though we are definitely ageing. In Australia they don't classify people by 'race' so you can't really make a direct comparison.

We don't really have 'ghettos' as such of the scale of American cities, but some of the suburbs tend to be hotspots for crime, usually the poorer Inner Eastern, Northeastern and Southeastern suburbs. Crime is very rare where I live.

I'd also like to live in a suburb with older housing stock if possible; my suburb was only sub-divided in 1979, with most houses of the 1982-1992 vintage. In our local council (sort of similar to a 'county'), we have some really interesting houses that date back to the late 19th century, but they are fast disappearing, which is sort of a pity.

What % of Americans speak Spanish as a first language?

What % of people in the US speak Spainish as a second language? What % of people living in the US speak a language other than Spainsih or English as a first language?