This video was made possible by Skillshare. Start learning new skills for free by being
one of the first 1,000 to click the link in the description. Charles Dickens once famously wrote: “it
was the best of times and it was the worst of times.” It was a dumb thing to say, and has nothing
to do with this video, but it was in a book called A Tale of Two Cities—which is what
this episode is about. Well, technically, the tale of two cities
within a bunch of cities, but Dickens never wrote a book called that—he was too busy
getting rich writing about how hard being poor was. The point is, cities are split between the
wealthy folk and the not-so-wealthy folk, and in many cases the not-so-wealthy folk
live on the city’s east side. Now this divide, whether in New York City
or Paris, surprisingly has nothing to do with the fact that west rhymes with “best”
while east rhymes with “yeast…” and also “niece” if you kind of slur the end. Rather, the reason why the eastern sides of
so many cities are poorer has to do with the wind. If we are to shame the wind responsibly, we
must first understand it. These are westerly winds, named after leftist
activist Cornel West. Or because they originate from the West… maybe… I don’t know; look guys, I’m not a gynecologist
or whatever it’s called. Between 30 and 60 degrees latitude, westerlies
are what wind scientists call prevailing winds, because when another wind challenges them
for wind-direction-supremacy, the westerlies always prevail. Why these winds go from west to east as consistently
as white guys who are obsessed with anime has to do with the general roundness of the
planet and the fact that it’s spinning. If the planet weren’t spinning—well, first
of all, we’d all be dead—but also, warm air from the middle latitudes would simply
do what Georgia Republicans failed to do in January, and head to the poles. But because the planet is spinning counter-clockwise,
and because the air closer to the equator is spinning faster due to the fact that, much
like me, earth is thicker at its midsection, these winds consistently flow through the
middle latitudes in the northern hemisphere on a northeastern trajectory. This is called the Coriolis effect, named
after some dead nerd probably, but for our purposes it just means that if you’re a
city sitting in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, which includes a majority
of the largest 100, then most of your wind is coming out of the west. But wind doesn’t make one poorer by itself—that’s
a power reserved for the users of Reddit’s WallStreetBets. It’s actually what the wind carried for
decades and decades that led to wealth disparities on certain cities’ east/west axis. You see, while you may find cities to be gross
and stinky today, they were even grosser and stinky-er before—and not just because people
hadn’t yet invented floss or sewers or the concept of showering. Back in the day, well before you could make
a living googling random facts and hiring unpaid interns to make them into videos, people
in cities had to make things or things that make things or things that make things that
make things—we call this period the Industrial Revolution. With revolution came rubbish in the form of
pollution. For much of the 19th century, pollution released
into the air floated out of downtown chimneys in all its dark, noxious splendor, and caught
a lift on the prevailing westerlies, which brought the pollution eastward, where it tickled
the noses and lunges of east siders from Manchester to Helsinki. As it turned out, people living in the 19th
century are similar to people in the 21st century in that they weren’t huge fans of
toxic air and inescapable, unrelenting pollution, so those who had money decided to leave for
less stinky neighborhoods while the working class who couldn’t leave or relied on the
cheaper cost of living stayed. Now, a lot has changed since the Industrial
Revolution. Northern hemisphere cities have out-sourced
industrial pollution to the developing world and rural areas like the coasts of the Gulf
of Mexico and Alaska, and radical environmentalists like Richard Nixon have passed laws to slow
down how much poison we pump into the air. But, still to this day, the east sides of
Industrial Revolution cities like London, Paris, Toronto, and Pittsburgh are feeling
the toll of their stinky past. You see, in a study authored by these three
fancy academic folks on the relationship between industrial pollution and economic segregation
in Britain, “these equilibria persist to this day even though the pollution that initially
caused them has waned,” which is basically liberal coastal elite Illuminati talk for
“even when the pollution stops, the money doesn’t come back into the east sides of
cities.” What may flip this trend though, comes in
the form of gentrifiers: oat milk latte-sipping, distressed jeans-wearing, Great Gatsby-reading,
exposed brick-loving hipsters, drawn to the grit and blue collar feel of east ends, who
move into these poorer eastern areas, bringing with them open floor plan coffee shops and
Korean-fusion taquerias. This hipster takeover, however, is rarely,
if ever, a fair economic boost for downtrodden urban areas, as it prices out and pushes away
the area’s working-class base. So, if you find yourself on the east side
of a city and think “oh this is a bit rough” then blame the wind, but if you say “this
is a bit rough, but the craft beer scene is popping” then blame wind and gentrification. And if you say “I love this pour-over coffee
place and its industrial feel” then take a long look in the mirror when you get home. Of course, not all cities came to be during
the Industrial Revolution, not all cities sit at the mercy of westerly winds, and not
all east ends are poorer. There have been plenty of other factors through
history that have shaped inequality in cities like proximity to ports and rivers, the growth
of suburbs, and, particularly popular in the US, racism—often in the form of red-lining
and racial segregation. But if you are planning to move to an industrial
city in say China or somewhere in the developing world, don’t just consider how far away
the nearest Trader Joes is from your neighborhood, make sure to think long and hard about what
you’re downwind from. Ultimately though, whether you’re living
on the east end, west end, next to a Trader Joes or miles and miles away, you are still
the master of your own domain, be it a house, an apartment, or a bedroom, and to make the
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Toronto? Is Scarborough not balanced out by Jane and Finch and Etobicoke?
Lots of other issues than wind. Or at least it is preindustrial. London had a lot to do with shipping and the historic relationship or London City with Westminster. Paris similarly I believe it was a lot about railway connections to the east vs fashionable areas connected to Versailles and countryside to the west
I've had this thought before, but I'd like to see some data to see if it's true.
Salt Lake City is the opposite. East side is wealthy close to the mountains... West side the proverbial other side of the tracks and freeway. Though everything is getting pricy now.
This production style and corny narration is so obnoxious.
St Louis is North/South, so is Minneapolis and LA.
Boston is poor in the SW and richest to the NW. and middle class to the NE.
Philly is poor in the West richest in the North middle in the South
Chicago is poorest to the South
I suppose New Orleans and Cleveland are poorer to the east but I wouldn’t call it a trend.
NYC Bronx (North) is the poorest area.
Atlanta also has a North/South Divide and it’s nicest areas are on the east side
He mentions Pittsburgh as an example of this phenomenon, but that's not the case. The eastern neighborhoods were among Pittsburgh's first suburbs and were where the Frick, Westinghouse, Mellon, Heinz and other Gilded Age millionaires had their estates, and most of those neighborhoods remain some of the most desirable urban places in the region. There is a lot of poverty in the East End as well with poor neighborhoods like Homewood and Larimer butting right up against Shadyside, Point Breeze, and Highland Park. but those disparities have more to do with the legacy of racism and redlining than environmental factors.
In Pittsburgh, the wealthy wanted to be elevated away from the river valleys because that's where the pollution was and remains, the worst. Even the redlined mortgage maps from the 1930s showed the areas that were either black communities or industrial areas long the rivers.
Oh wow, when I was a kid some adult asked me why rich people live on the west sides of cities as like a trivia question. When I said I didn't know he said I should look it up. I tried but could never find a good answer. Now I know it was a real thing and not just some random childhood hallucination haha
I really wish this guy weren't so painfully unfunny.