Why The East Sides of Cities Are Poorer Than The West - Cheddar Explains

check out this map of Helsinki the gray shaded area is home to the city's more economically deprived neighborhoods now here's Paris and London and Manchester same story a trio of economists set out to test their theory why do so many cities have poor East Side's these researchers modelled 70 English cities as they would have existed in 1880 during the height of the industrial revolution to build their model of each city they started with detailed maps made by Victorian era surveyors who were very thorough the economists use those maps to locate each industrial chimney within a given city once they had located all of these chimneys 5,000 of them at all they used a cutting-edge atmospheric dispersion modeling system to tell them literally which way the wind was blowing in 1880 and how the smoke from those chimneys would be dispersed throughout a given city the pollution from those chimneys was no joke there were hundreds of industrial chimneys in a city like Manchester pumping black coal smoke into the air an observer at the time compared Manchester to an active volcano the researchers found a strong correlation between air pollution and low skilled workers in a given neighborhood in 1881 those who could afford it moved away from the Sioux deist most polluted neighborhoods leaving behind a lower income population but why were those polluted neighborhoods always in the East that's because the middle latitudes where most cities are located have westerly prevailing winds meaning they blow to the East carrying that air pollution with them if the economists also looked at whether the pattern of poor East Side's existed before the Industrial Revolution when they looked at the neighborhood makeup for these same cities before the rise in coal use the pattern of poor East Side's wasn't there they also ran the models to see what happened after the 1968 passage of England's Clean Air Act for the most part the effect eased up as the pollution did except in areas where it had been really polluted once pollution levels passed a certain tipping point the neighborhood tended to remain deprived even after pollution declined this isn't to say that this is the one theory to rule them all when it comes to how cities grow and develop but if you're looking at the socio-economic distribution of a formerly industrial city in the middle latitudes this might be your answer the author's point out that their results are helpful to keep in mind for policy makers and planners in rapidly developing places like China as their study shows even a temporary environmental disadvantage can have lasting effects on a neighborhood and the people who live there for you and me it's just cool to know that part of the reason things are the way they are today can be chalked up to something as seemingly unrelated as which way the wind was blowing over a hundred years ago how did your city get its shape how did its neighborhoods end up where they are hit the comments to share your favorite theories and your hottest spatial economic stakes like subscribe and see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 653,008

Rating: 4.8402424 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, explainer, explainer video, urban planning, urban, alex trew, yanos zylbergerg, stephen heblich, east side, poor east sides, atmospheric dispersion, atmospheric dispersion modeling, industrial revolution, manchester, polution, lower income neighborhoods, low income, socioeconomic, socioeconomic factors, socio economics, urban design, history, soot, air polution, industrial chimney, economics, city design, city planning

Id: 3MlyAvUfh8E

Length: 3min 41sec (221 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018