As American cities become increasingly diverse, the future may look a bit like Stockton, California.

The northern California city tops the list of America’s most diverse large cities, according to an analysis by US News and World Report.

Cities in the Golden State make up seven of the top 10 US urban centers with the most racially and ethnically diverse populations: Stockton, followed by Oakland, Sacramento, Long Beach, San Jose, Los Angeles and Fresno.

The US News analysis is based on recent census data. It gave 66 cities across the US with populations of 300,000 or more a diversity score that represents the likelihood that two random residents will belong to different racial and ethnic groups.

The seven California cities in the top 10 are standouts in a trend seen across the country. Nearly 70% of the cities featured on the list became more diverse between 2010 and 2018, according to the analysis.

“California is America, just sooner,” Manuel Pastor, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, told US News and World report.

Today, 45% of Stockton’s residents are white, 22% Asian and 12% black. Hispanics, who can be of any race, make up 42% of the population, according to 2018 census data.

The demographic changes in Stockton and other California cities topping the list have not happened at dramatic rates, underscoring the fact the state has long been a multicultural hub. Stockton became just 0.1% more diverse between 2010 and 2018. Detroit, by contrast, became 21% more diverse – the largest jump in the US.

Stockton, which sits on the San Joaquin River in California’s Central Valley, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive inland from San Francisco, formed in 1849 as a supply center for miners who chased their dreams of gold to the west coast. In the 1980s, the city became one of the nation’s first with no significant racial majority, as Mexican and Central American farmworkers and refugees from Cambodia and Laos moved in.

The 1980s also ushered in tough times. Over the decade the city saw a rise in street gangs, crime and drugs.

In the early 2000s, Stockton set about reinventing itself, launching redevelopment projects and revitalizing its downtown.

But like many American cities, it was pummeled by the 2008 economic crisis. In 2011, Forbes ground salt in the wounds when it placed the city atop its list of the country’s “most miserable cities”. The following year, the city declared bankruptcy.

Throughout Stockton’s different crises, residents say, diverse neighborhoods disproportionally struggled amid discrimination and racist policies.

Today, there are signs the city is getting back in the game.

Michael Tubbs, elected in 2016 the city’s first black mayor, has led a number of initiatives aimed at economic improvement, education and making sure longtime residents are not displaced by those fleeing the Bay Area’s astronomical housing prices.

Among the initiatives Tubbs has spearheaded is a universal basic income experiment in which 125 residents, selected at random, are given $500 a month, no strings attached, to supplement income. So far, data from the 18-month pilot project indicates that people are using money for food and utilities.

Because race and opportunity are so often intertwined, the mayor hopes the efforts will boost the city’s economy while lifting up the residents and communities that have historically been left out of progress.

The question of how to make that happen is one that city leaders – not just in California but across the country – will have to answer.