Why Are East Sides of Cities Poorer Than West Sides?
The east sides of New York, London, and Paris are noticeably and famously poorer than their western sides. And it turns out there’s a reason for that, reports Market Watch.
Researchers have found that it’s due to the impact of air pollutants at the time of the Industrial Revolution, as prevailing winds in the U.S. and Europe typically blow from west to east. And it’s an impact that has lasted into today. A paper from the Spatial Economics Research Centre examined 5,000 industrial chimneys in 70 English cities in 1880, and then re-created the spatial distribution of pollution. That historical pollution explained up to 15 percent of within-city deprivation in 1881.
“A pollution differential equivalent to the one between the 10 percent and 90 percent most polluted neighborhoods of Manchester would be associated with a gradient of 18 percentage points in the share of low-skilled workers,” the paper found. Perhaps more incredibly, that difference has continued to this day even though the pollution that caused them has waned. The researchers say the findings have practical implications both in the developing and developed world.