Ethnic diversity is less interesting (and less relevant) - I'd also call it a stretch to consider San Jose as the main city of silicon valley. The people actually working in tech are fairly homogenous culturally (which is what the OP was talking about).

I'm not saying this is bad, but that diversity may not be that important for a silicon valley like atmosphere and that the people who work in tech aren't very diverse. Palo Alto also isn't a very varied place and is the center of the current silicon valley.

I think a meritocracy and a willingness to try/accept new ideas rather than hold on to tradition is the important thing. I think that tends to go along with education, the more highly selected the better.

How do you mean? Fort Bend County in the Houston area is the most ethnically diverse:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Fort...

But I've no doubt Silicon Valley is fairly diverse, although there were a bunch of articles in the last couple of years pointing out how little diversity there is in the management layers of Silicon Valley companies.

San Jose (the largest city in Silicon Valley) has no demographic group comprising more than 35% of the entire population.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2012/11/13/finding-divers...

I'll allow a truce. :) I was hanging out with Rice sociologist Dr. Michael Emerson this morning so the topic is near and dear to my heart! FWIW they're all very close right now, and the biggest surprise is that Houston is so diverse--it has undergone the most rapid transformation of any large city in America in the last 3 decades, which means it's on track for rapidly outpacing the others in ethnic diversity (there were few Hispanics and Asians here when I was born, and now there are huge numbers).

Houston has the advantages of affordable property, more jobs for a wider range of backgrounds and few limits to development. It seems natural that new immigrants not specifically involved in the software industry would choose Houston over Silicon Valley. Especially if they already know they can take the humidity.

The cost of housing alone. An equivalent to my large house in a leafy suburb of Houston is absolutely unaffordable to me now I live in the Bay Area. Personally I prefer my overall lifestyle and standard of living here, but it's bloody pricey!

Prices (in SF, anyway) have also increased dramatically since I left the area in 2009. I got paid more and paid less for rent when I moved to NYC, which didn't make sense to me, either.

That's funny...

because having lived in New York, and currently between DC and Houston, whenever I'm in Silicon Valley I'm always sort of, taken aback, by the paucity of blacks there. Reading through that article, I see now that it wasn't just my imagination.

That's a worthless demographic. What does that tell us about the demographics of startups and tech?

Nope.

Statistically...

it's Houston.

This study puts a few cities ahead of Houston.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/09/07/which-u-s-cities-a...

(I don't really care what city wins, but it was absurd to read that the Silicon Valley area was not diverse...)

Yeah, that was absurd. I also don't care since I know Houston is changing the most rapidly and will soon win by a landslide. ;)

I think the key is though - and certainly the point I was trying to make at the start of the thread - it's not just ethnic diversity, though that's important. It's diversity of opinion and other cultural factors. There's an open-mindedness to Silicon Valley that is definitely not there in Houston - my in-laws are from Houston and I lived there for three years, and I don't think anyone would make the case that it's comparable to the Bay Area for that.

Yet that cultural tolerance has been shown time and again to be critical in attracting the creative class professionals which make Silicon Valley tick.

I'd agree that it's cultural tolerance that is the important factor, but I don't know if that results from diversity - I think it results from education.