West is now the wrong side. You drive to work with the sun in your face. You drive home with the sun in your face. I lived on the west side of town for 10 years before I figured that out.
well if you work on the Eastside certainly it's a reasonable idea to live on the east side just cuz you're closer to work. If yours is the opposite of most people's commute, it's really awesome. Sun in your eyes or not, a 10 minute commute is better than a 40 minute one. Where I've lived East is generally speaking where the blue collar jobs are, and West is where the white collar jobs are. So the rich people who live and work on the west side commute northward and southward.
I grew up in Tacoma, Washington. (It's in his first slide). The east side of the city sits across I-5 and the smell of sulphur (from a papermill that's always been there) and rotting shellfish blows eastward most days onto a native american reservation there and more of the cheaper housing. I lived with that for years, after a while it's hard to even notice. This is real.
In my country, the East sides of cities are definitely the more affluent, frequently significantly so. As a kid, I always thought this was about not having to face the sun on daily travel.... in my country the western suburbs are often the places where recent migrants are settled...
There's been some reversal of this in some communities based on commuter experience. The east side of Jackson, Mississippi was, until the 1960s, lined with illegal nightclubs and casinos, and to the east of those lived both poor white and poor black Mississippians. But since the freeways were built there's been a steady improvement in the physical appeal and the amenities of those suburbs east of the city center such that today they include some of the most valuable property in the metro area of Jackson. I think a big reason for this might be the commuter experience. Jackson has only minimal public transit, so everybody drives. The diurnal cycle is such that if one lives east of the place one needs to be for work each day, then driving to and from work will mean always driving away from, not toward, the sun. I've always paid attention to this in choosing a place to live.
They actually make significantly less than that...I live in east menlo park...across from EPA....Plus rents here are crazy...I own so dont get the idea that I am saying I cant afford it...There was a article out in Mercury news, and I believe it said" the lower class wage in the bay area is 113K per year...Nearly 80 percent of people in EPA dont make that much...and I know because I am grew up in that area...The other 20 percent have jobs right down the street at FBHQ...
I like how his graphic @5:11 puts *Income as most important and above Jobs.* That's the reality we are still stubbornly refusing to recognize, institutionally and socially.
He started with an interesting observation, which had an interesting and complex history. But I really wish he built something more concrete on that. Poverty is a really difficult, complicated problem to solve and I don't see how "We have to design for everyone" provides illumination on any of the questions we have to answer in order to address it.
It really isn't complex at all. It just requires taxing wealth and giving people money. It is politically difficult because people with money are powerful and don't want to give up their power but it isn't complicated.
@@oliverwilson11 You're building your worldview on the assumption that money is capable of solving poverty. The lottery has proven over and over that even if you give a poor person unfathomable amounts of money, they end up back in poverty very quickly.
The problem with bad design, is that people are very good at self-delusion, are really stubborn and campaign for/resist change, and the more that some stubborn people are about causing change, the more some stubborn people are about resisting change, and it once more becomes a zero sum of change. Like Racism. Legally, things changed, but socially, nothing did. Nick Fury may now be a black guy that owns the role so bad, the character was remodelled on him *years* before he was cast, but there'll always be the folks who'll think he's nothing but a trumped up punk... regardless of Sam Jackson's stance on Donald Trump. Don has nothing to do with the argument, except that he (a white guy) replaced a black guy when he was somehow voted into office, beating out a woman who's hubby had previously been president. ... what was my point? Oh, yeah. the Bad Design is so ingrained that I doubt it'll change much, unless we somehow eliminate wind. Wind is bad, I know this because all those wind turbines we made to create 'green' electricity spin too fast in wind, and disintegrate, with the motors burning up, and they take sooo much space, so wind is bad. Bring on Nuclear Power! we're my damn fusion reactors!? Also, humanity may be a little afraid of the dark, and where does it get dark first? The East. tiny reinforcing point.
This is what I live for. This is why I work in South Dallas. The potential I see there... in the people, especially the kids it starts with the kids and setting them on the right path. I may not see a major change in my life time but I’m hoping to at least make a dent. I believe whole heartedly that South Dallas can be just as beautiful as north Dallas WITHOUT pushing everyone out by making it over priced. We have to work together.
Though I feel it's a noble message to design for everyone, not just a selected group -- when you cater to all, you end up with nobody getting what they need. Haves and have-nots are synonymous with status and social classes. History shows what happens when you attempt to abolish them.
Similarly in the southern Hemisphere, East is best. The wind and pollution are so bad in Western Melbourne and Sydney, housing prices are lower in these Western sides of the cities.
How exactly do you solve the east sides of cities inequality and lack of wealth _without_ gentrification? I have a hard time seeing how there is any reliable method in any reasonable amount of time that wouldn’t simply gentrify.
I don't know that anyone wants to stop gentrification entirely. They just want cities to manage it better. Cities CAN plan for the needs of traditional residents, but they usually don't and that's the biggest problem, as I understand.
Then how does gentrification not just force the previous poor residents to go somewhere else, stay poor, and possibly become worse off due to having to find new employment? Even if they did 'plan for the needs of traditional residents' I do not see any situation where they aren't still worse off.
There’s a reason San Jose ca was nearly a total loss, like SF is, and they turned it around.... they bulldozed the shithole and gentrified it and now it’s one of the few places in the Bay Area I’d be willing to go
Very interesting. I had long thought it was due to Westward Expansion in the USA, with older communities being left behind, while development continued its march in the direction of the country's growth. Maybe that is a factor, but if you're seeing this eastside phenomenon all over the world, then the eastward flow of air pollution could be even more important.
What about the South side of Chicago? The cheap part of town is the oldest, generally. Also, I think most cities in the US generally grow west because travel and trade slightly favors westward movement.
In Australia it's the opposite. Most cities the better side is the east side as it's closer to the coast. The one exception to this is Perth where the rich side is in the west because it's equally close to the beach as to the city.
Mmm K That's wrong. He actually mentions how prevailing wind direction is Eastward both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres due to the Earth's eastward rotation
I did as well with those same cities. He is right about East Palo Alto and East Oakland too. In L.A. you know exactly when you're on the Eastside. The stray dogs act differently.
We could do that horseshoe thing he talked about, and just put all the industry and railroad tracks in the East. Boom, problem solved. SimCity high score.
Forgetting that the idea that all pollution entirely moves east all the time, which is incorrect, many of the cities he mentioned don't have heavy pollution and aren't industrial.
People will want to move closer to work - and would probably not be able to afford the trips from other places. Tenements and housing would at some point develop around the trains and factories - I've seen this in fossilized form around various locals in NW Indiana.
We didn't need you to research this, in the UK this has been widely known a long time. We used to have very smokey industrial areas, which were built to the east so that the smoke blew away from town. Working class housing was typically built close to those areas.
in Auckland, New Zealand the South is the poorest, West also being rather low income, and the East and North are the most upmarket suburbs. But in Christchurch, there is a clear split between East and West, apart from hill suburbs in the south east
Decatur, Illinois: smelly food-processing on the east side. Sort of true. But the reservoir is to the southeast, so there’s some expensive lakefront property - but all on the far side. Sewage treatment is on the west side of town because it’s a low point and the sewage is not pumped but flows by gravity. West-enders get some sewage stench although that’s been mitigated a lot over the years. There’s a bit of a horseshoe anyway. But when the wind occasionally shifts, the smell envelops most of the city. Sort of like bad baked beans.
Cheap housing and “poor neighborhoods” are probably always going to exist, and with poverty comes crime, which is it’s own vicious cycle. The speaker did touch on education inequality and that to me is major. Education as well as child mentoring should be mandatory, cause unfortunately a lot of “parents” don’t seem to want to actually raise their kids and people want to blame the educational system for not fixing bad parenting.
There's something wrong with the campfire metaphore. He forgot to mention the people who do not even get a seat by the fire. If you sit in a horseshoe, someone else is going to come fill that gap
There are those who can, and those who can't, as long as this is so, you will have those who have, and those how have not. Some truths may be inconvenient, but that doesn't make them any less true.
Okay, so let's say in an over-simplified ideal situation, all communities are shaped like a "U" and no one inhabits the east side. Then what? What is the east side used for? Nothing? No one at all would be willing to utilize that space? It's just going to sit there and every single possible use case gets thrown out because absolutely nobody will be interested in developing it for any productive purpose whatsoever? Of course not. That's ridiculous. The value of the east side doesn't magically become zero because we say it's zero, the value of the east side is lower than the other areas in the community simply because of the natural consequences of the prevailing winds. The value isn't zero, it's just less than the other areas. So if you gave low income people the option to live in a tiny shack that they could afford in the nicer parts of town, or a nicer home on the east side of town, some of them will happily choose the east side because some people will value the larger property and or larger/nicer home in the smelly neighborhood more than other people value the clean air. So it's not a matter of force or coercion or planning, it's just a matter of allowing less desirable places to be sold for less money and more desirable places to be sold for more money. It's simple economics, and try as you may, there is no way around it unless you're willing to take people's freedom away and force people to do what some powerful "Central Entity" believes or claims is right. And that is WRONG!
In the US, the laws are not made to benefit everyone equally, it's made to benefit the money, and the money makes the laws, if general public wants a law, they have to pay the lobbyists for it.
The eastside of Milwaukee is the lakeshore, it is lined with mansions, parks and skyscrapers it is the wealthiest part of the city, westside is the hood.
Where I live is the opposite to this - east is the desirable side of town. I think this is because it's an agricultural area, not industrial, so there wasn't the pollution blown by the wind.
💝 A young, optimistic, highly educated Black man attempting to appeal to the more Inclusive, higher nature of his fellow Americans. During his talk, my anger & cynicism remained silent. His words & attitude were: HUMBLING. 🗿 (S.F.)
It's actually West Philadelphia that's on the the wrong side of the tracks, because those who were born and raised there know that there are a lot of guys that are up to no good, that start making trouble in the neighbourhood.
Nice thoughts, but I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks (well under the poverty line) in a single-parent household with two children, and had no impediments whatsoever in climbing quite far up the socioeconomic ladder, so I have a hard time relating to any of this. And my sister made it just fine, too, by the way. Sure, it took hard work, but it wasn't any harder than the work put in by those who started out on the right side of the tracks. And no, I'm not white, so there was no white privilege for me, and in my time (coming of age in the late 1980s) I never saw any evidence of its existence anyway. Putting aside luck, which always plays a role for everyone, it all comes down to what you do, not what others have done to you. If you let yourself feel disadvantaged somehow and then use that as an excuse for not trying to do better, then you won't do better. If you join a gang or start abusing drugs and committing crimes just because you live in the less desirable part of town, then you'll have to live with the consequences of making such bad choices. I realize that not everyone has the inner strength and will to resist the negative influences around them. I'm just saying that if you do, then there is nothing else holding you back from making a better life for yourself. The bad parenting and bad subcultures that are found in the bad neighborhoods are what help perpetuate this division between the haves and have-nots. Having bad infrastructure and dirty, ugly looking living spaces aren't great, either, but they aren't the real problem, which is social in nature. Those who are a part of or related to bad subcultures in some way (such as race) need to have honest, earnest conversations about what is really going on instead of always blaming whitey and trying to guilt-trip him and take from him. Whitey never held me back in any way, and we get along just fine. In fact, there were some white people I knew from the wrong side of the tracks who made the same journey I did from poverty to prosperity. So it's not about race, per se, but to the extent that certain races aren't doing nearly as well as others overall, what really needs to be addressed are the associated negative subcultures. But sadly it seems that people aren't willing to do that. Their public "leaders" would much rather just blame whites. More broadly there are groups like the Democrats who have a stake in keeping poor people of certain races and ethnicities poor so that they can buy votes with handouts of taxpayer money, and they blame whites for everything to make it look like they are on the side of the poor and downtrodden, when in fact they are just using them to gain power and want to keep them right where they are. That's a big reason why hardly anything has changed for the better, and maybe things are getting worse. Take it from someone who actually made it out of poverty (and without any undue difficulty)--you don't need anyone's handouts and there is no advantage to blaming others for your problems, especially when it's not even their fault. And don't be distracted by silly, irrelevant things like which side of the tracks you start out on and which way the wind blows--none of that is holding you back. There are, however, people who will try to hold you back because they're using you, namely the Democrats. Don't listen to what they say and don't let them use you to divide the country--just do what successful people do and you will be successful. I've seen this work over and over again, and I've done it myself.
The east side of Milwaukee is far more wealthy than the west side. The city is divided by a river not a train and the property closer to the lake is in far higher demand than on the west side.
In Pittsburgh there are very wealthy communities east of the downtown, but most are more North like Shady Side and Squirrel Hill, It tends to be the polluted Mon Valley and turtle Creek in the South east that is the poorest places like Duquesne and McKeesport, while the Allegheny and Monroeville/Murrysville are quite successful.
I was triggered from the beginning. That is not how wind works. He isn't wrong that the general direction of wind in the US does head east, but just Google global wind patterns and notice that the winds are not all going east.
why is there always a random baby walking around by itself in those areas? i have to go to a lot of run down areas for jobs and i swear random babies walking around is a normal thing there, i called the police once to let them know and see if they could track down the parents and the officer on the phone just chuckled and asked "you dont come round here much do you?" what a strange place
east side of St Paul, MN: same story. personal thing that blew my mind: playing city-building games (Cities: Skylines, specifically), i always put industrial zones on the east side of a city i’m building. never thought about why.. till now.
It might also be because English speakers are trained to look left to right, and so you put the most important information on the left subconsciously. (Assuming you look at the game in a typical North top way)
gnihton interesting. it’s all a great reminder of just how intricate the reasons behind something seemingly benign can be. the world is very, very complicated. .. i think i need to lay down..
Not in Tucson and Phoenix Arizona! The East Part of Town is where the money is. I live in Scottsdale and it is much nicer than West Phoenix! In Tucson it is the Foothills with all that Snow Bird Money!
if it is, as he says, a simple matter of the wind then would you not expect to see a disparity between the entire east and west of a country as a whole? The west of each city borders the east of the previous one and so should there be the same cause and effect in that situation?
I thought about that years ago. I'm from Montreal and the west side is the upper Anglos and the east side is the blue collar french-canadian. Separating the two is oil refineries and industrial parks..
He doesn't provide any solutions; but I think that he was possibly suggesting that people with money and power, the people who run cities and design infrastructure, need to change their attitudes to the East-Side / poorer neighbourhoods because most of the industry that was causing these areas to smell bad or have smokey air are gone. So they should invest accordingly.
You're right that you're not the only one to notice it, and that it's here in the UK. I always assumed in London it was to do with the River Thames. But struggled to see why it was more widespread. Are you saying, then, that this phenomenon is apparent on both East and West coasts of the US? Interesting.
I live in and redevelop in the inland empire. The east end of SoCal. The valley of smog. I can tell you with certainty that no matter how good of a job I do on my low end homes, no one pays for the upgrades. They want the minimum viable product. This isn’t saying we can’t have a fair distribution of infrastructure, but at the individual property level, lower income buyers don’t want to pay for improvements regardless of their ability to afford it. No matter how fair we distribute the infrastructure you still have cheaper lend in less desirable areas based on view, proximity to jobs, etc. Capitalism is Fair not Equal.
No. The worst part of Jakarta is at the north part of the city. The worst part of Surabaya is also at the north part of the city. The worst part of Bandung is also at the north. Some said that Eastern of Indonesia is less developed than the Western of Indonesia. However if we locate the map, the wealthiest part of Indonesia is Java, and Java is at the south side of the country. You only see it from Europe and North American perspective.
Permaculture should be the new design because the most radical thing you can do is grow your own food. Village Homes in Davis California is a 45 year old living model of how it can work.
Very interesting. I live in the UK. My city is the complete opposite. The West side is the wrong side of the river. The East side is cleaner, more modern, better schools, better houses etc.
Oslo is opposite, east side is the traditionally expensive side. Wonder if the shape of the fjord and city made a difference. Probably more to do with outlook points, good farming and good ports.
Hmmm that is an interesting thing to notice. So why not just put the big polluters on the east side and the people on the west side? Oh right because these things are already in place. As for camp fire smoke, we just say "white rabbit white rabbit go away" the smoke listens. Maybe if all the people on the east side say it then the earth will start spinning in the other direction! The problem with his campfire graphic is that generally the pollution comes from many sources, not just one camp fire
I guess ocean front property on the east coast is really cheap? Cool. I know lakefront property in Chicago, which is in the east, is quite expensive. How does he explain this?
It's not disparity by design, it is logical consequences of development It is not race based, it is class based. The crappy sides of any town will be populated by the poorest, regardless of color, so the INSINUATION that this is a disparity by design BASED on RACE is race-baiting. Do you think the shipyard workers in Belfast, N. Ireland live where they live because that is where the English industrialists wanted the non-existent Black workers to live? It is not always about YOU, not always about race.
The real problem is that we're too set in our ways as a whole. Blame is not with the communities. It's with the banks and corporations that keep low income families rooted in these areas. Poverty has twisted these areas into places that no one wants to live or bring business to.
West is now the wrong side. You drive to work with the sun in your face. You drive home with the sun in your face. I lived on the west side of town for 10 years before I figured that out.
well if you work on the Eastside certainly it's a reasonable idea to live on the east side just cuz you're closer to work. If yours is the opposite of most people's commute, it's really awesome. Sun in your eyes or not, a 10 minute commute is better than a 40 minute one.
Where I've lived East is generally speaking where the blue collar jobs are, and West is where the white collar jobs are. So the rich people who live and work on the west side commute northward and southward.
It is way peopole prefer to live on west side ;) they always see the sun and go in the direction of sun. Natural
@@FiercelyGold in the middle is downtown!
Dublin is on the east coast. All of Ireland commutes this way.
I think maybe you missed the point of this video...
All we had to do was to follow the damn train CJ
San Andreas
Yoooo I’m weak 😂😂😂😂
That is seriously a PTSD trigger for every san andreas player lmao
I grew up in Tacoma, Washington. (It's in his first slide). The east side of the city sits across I-5 and the smell of sulphur (from a papermill that's always been there) and rotting shellfish blows eastward most days onto a native american reservation there and more of the cheaper housing. I lived with that for years, after a while it's hard to even notice.
This is real.
Is this the famous Tacoma Aroma Frank Zappa is talking about?
yes... I live in Seattle and frequent Tacoma which is 30 minutes away.
yeah man that's the aroma.
its 30 minutes if you're super lucky and find a time when there's no traffic. haha
It's been a lot better since the paper mill was forced to manage their pollution. Still got the Bay though.
"Go west young man"
TheAfroMonk yes, Horace Greeley, I do believe
In my country, the East sides of cities are definitely the more affluent, frequently significantly so. As a kid, I always thought this was about not having to face the sun on daily travel.... in my country the western suburbs are often the places where recent migrants are settled...
There's been some reversal of this in some communities based on commuter experience. The east side of Jackson, Mississippi was, until the 1960s, lined with illegal nightclubs and casinos, and to the east of those lived both poor white and poor black Mississippians. But since the freeways were built there's been a steady improvement in the physical appeal and the amenities of those suburbs east of the city center such that today they include some of the most valuable property in the metro area of Jackson.
I think a big reason for this might be the commuter experience. Jackson has only minimal public transit, so everybody drives. The diurnal cycle is such that if one lives east of the place one needs to be for work each day, then driving to and from work will mean always driving away from, not toward, the sun. I've always paid attention to this in choosing a place to live.
But... Wind doesn't just blow east, it blows in literally every direction
Technically, West and east Jerusalem are seperated mostly by religion 1:48
Aw man I wish this was longer.
Same
The _real_ wrong side of the tracks: the inside.
This was fascinating to watch.
Essentially all your problems are literally caused by someone else. Always someone else’s fault.
East Palo Alto: Those poor people that make less than $200k a year :(
They actually make significantly less than that...I live in east menlo park...across from EPA....Plus rents here are crazy...I own so dont get the idea that I am saying I cant afford it...There was a article out in Mercury news, and I believe it said" the lower class wage in the bay area is 113K per year...Nearly 80 percent of people in EPA dont make that much...and I know because I am grew up in that area...The other 20 percent have jobs right down the street at FBHQ...
I like how his graphic @5:11 puts *Income as most important and above Jobs.*
That's the reality we are still stubbornly refusing to recognize, institutionally and socially.
must be a goddamned socialist
He started with an interesting observation, which had an interesting and complex history. But I really wish he built something more concrete on that. Poverty is a really difficult, complicated problem to solve and I don't see how "We have to design for everyone" provides illumination on any of the questions we have to answer in order to address it.
It really isn't complex at all. It just requires taxing wealth and giving people money. It is politically difficult because people with money are powerful and don't want to give up their power but it isn't complicated.
@@oliverwilson11 You're building your worldview on the assumption that money is capable of solving poverty. The lottery has proven over and over that even if you give a poor person unfathomable amounts of money, they end up back in poverty very quickly.
The problem with bad design, is that people are very good at self-delusion, are really stubborn and campaign for/resist change, and the more that some stubborn people are about causing change, the more some stubborn people are about resisting change, and it once more becomes a zero sum of change. Like Racism. Legally, things changed, but socially, nothing did. Nick Fury may now be a black guy that owns the role so bad, the character was remodelled on him *years* before he was cast, but there'll always be the folks who'll think he's nothing but a trumped up punk... regardless of Sam Jackson's stance on Donald Trump. Don has nothing to do with the argument, except that he (a white guy) replaced a black guy when he was somehow voted into office, beating out a woman who's hubby had previously been president.
... what was my point?
Oh, yeah. the Bad Design is so ingrained that I doubt it'll change much, unless we somehow eliminate wind. Wind is bad, I know this because all those wind turbines we made to create 'green' electricity spin too fast in wind, and disintegrate, with the motors burning up, and they take sooo much space, so wind is bad. Bring on Nuclear Power! we're my damn fusion reactors!?
Also, humanity may be a little afraid of the dark, and where does it get dark first? The East. tiny reinforcing point.
@@StephanG007the money has to be used to build better institutions
This is what I live for. This is why I work in South Dallas. The potential I see there... in the people, especially the kids it starts with the kids and setting them on the right path. I may not see a major change in my life time but I’m hoping to at least make a dent. I believe whole heartedly that South Dallas can be just as beautiful as north Dallas WITHOUT pushing everyone out by making it over priced. We have to work together.
Though I feel it's a noble message to design for everyone, not just a selected group -- when you cater to all, you end up with nobody getting what they need. Haves and have-nots are synonymous with status and social classes. History shows what happens when you attempt to abolish them.
Similarly in the southern Hemisphere, East is best. The wind and pollution are so bad in Western Melbourne and Sydney, housing prices are lower in these Western sides of the cities.
Interesting
How exactly do you solve the east sides of cities inequality and lack of wealth _without_ gentrification? I have a hard time seeing how there is any reliable method in any reasonable amount of time that wouldn’t simply gentrify.
I don't know that anyone wants to stop gentrification entirely. They just want cities to manage it better. Cities CAN plan for the needs of traditional residents, but they usually don't and that's the biggest problem, as I understand.
Then how does gentrification not just force the previous poor residents to go somewhere else, stay poor, and possibly become worse off due to having to find new employment? Even if they did 'plan for the needs of traditional residents' I do not see any situation where they aren't still worse off.
There’s a reason San Jose ca was nearly a total loss, like SF is, and they turned it around.... they bulldozed the shithole and gentrified it and now it’s one of the few places in the Bay Area I’d be willing to go
Well we know they don't invest in themselves
just make the west side crappy too!
As long as trains blare their horns at crossings, both sides of the tracks are on the wrong side
Sherry Wines that’s sooooo true
Very interesting. I had long thought it was due to Westward Expansion in the USA, with older communities being left behind, while development continued its march in the direction of the country's growth. Maybe that is a factor, but if you're seeing this eastside phenomenon all over the world, then the eastward flow of air pollution could be even more important.
What about the South side of Chicago? The cheap part of town is the oldest, generally. Also, I think most cities in the US generally grow west because travel and trade slightly favors westward movement.
Jamie Foxx is way smarter than I thought, but what happened to his voice and accent?
😂
😂
I thought it was Lawrence Fishburne.
Omg yes!
R A C I S M
I’ve got some gripes, but over all good talk.
In Australia it's the opposite. Most cities the better side is the east side as it's closer to the coast. The one exception to this is Perth where the rich side is in the west because it's equally close to the beach as to the city.
I was thinking about that. Cairns was similar. If I got that right
Yes, he was not taking into consideration that for half of the world it would be the opposite. Because, science :)
Mmm K That's wrong. He actually mentions how prevailing wind direction is Eastward both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres due to the Earth's eastward rotation
Interestingly in Adelaide north east seems to be most industrial
Explain why EAST Palo Alto is geographically NORTH of Palo Alto?
I didn't know Jamie Foxx was invited for a Ted Talk
Yes, I noticed this eastside thing many years ago, and always wondered why. Houston. Austin. L.A. Noticed that way back in the eighties.
I did as well with those same cities. He is right about East Palo Alto and East Oakland too.
In L.A. you know exactly when you're on the Eastside. The stray dogs act differently.
We could do that horseshoe thing he talked about, and just put all the industry and railroad tracks in the East.
Boom, problem solved. SimCity high score.
Forgetting that the idea that all pollution entirely moves east all the time, which is incorrect, many of the cities he mentioned don't have heavy pollution and aren't industrial.
People will want to move closer to work - and would probably not be able to afford the trips from other places. Tenements and housing would at some point develop around the trains and factories - I've seen this in fossilized form around various locals in NW Indiana.
We didn't need you to research this, in the UK this has been widely known a long time. We used to have very smokey industrial areas, which were built to the east so that the smoke blew away from town. Working class housing was typically built close to those areas.
in Auckland, New Zealand the South is the poorest, West also being rather low income, and the East and North are the most upmarket suburbs. But in Christchurch, there is a clear split between East and West, apart from hill suburbs in the south east
Decatur, Illinois: smelly food-processing on the east side. Sort of true. But the reservoir is to the southeast, so there’s some expensive lakefront property - but all on the far side. Sewage treatment is on the west side of town because it’s a low point and the sewage is not pumped but flows by gravity. West-enders get some sewage stench although that’s been mitigated a lot over the years.
There’s a bit of a horseshoe anyway. But when the wind occasionally shifts, the smell envelops most of the city. Sort of like bad baked beans.
While the notion is admirable I really wish there was a more direct explanation of what is wrong and how we can fix it.
Cheap housing and “poor neighborhoods” are probably always going to exist, and with poverty comes crime, which is it’s own vicious cycle. The speaker did touch on education inequality and that to me is major. Education as well as child mentoring should be mandatory, cause unfortunately a lot of “parents” don’t seem to want to actually raise their kids and people want to blame the educational system for not fixing bad parenting.
There's something wrong with the campfire metaphore. He forgot to mention the people who do not even get a seat by the fire. If you sit in a horseshoe, someone else is going to come fill that gap
Most cities/towns near me its definitely the west side of tracks that's "bad". im 90 mins north of silicon valley. did the wind shift?
There are those who can, and those who can't, as long as this is so, you will have those who have, and those how have not. Some truths may be inconvenient, but that doesn't make them any less true.
Okay, so let's say in an over-simplified ideal situation, all communities are shaped like a "U" and no one inhabits the east side. Then what? What is the east side used for? Nothing? No one at all would be willing to utilize that space? It's just going to sit there and every single possible use case gets thrown out because absolutely nobody will be interested in developing it for any productive purpose whatsoever? Of course not. That's ridiculous. The value of the east side doesn't magically become zero because we say it's zero, the value of the east side is lower than the other areas in the community simply because of the natural consequences of the prevailing winds. The value isn't zero, it's just less than the other areas. So if you gave low income people the option to live in a tiny shack that they could afford in the nicer parts of town, or a nicer home on the east side of town, some of them will happily choose the east side because some people will value the larger property and or larger/nicer home in the smelly neighborhood more than other people value the clean air. So it's not a matter of force or coercion or planning, it's just a matter of allowing less desirable places to be sold for less money and more desirable places to be sold for more money. It's simple economics, and try as you may, there is no way around it unless you're willing to take people's freedom away and force people to do what some powerful "Central Entity" believes or claims is right. And that is WRONG!
Why are there even low income people in your hypothetical situation? That is a design choice
@@oliverwilson11 Just modeling reality
In the US, the laws are not made to benefit everyone equally, it's made to benefit the money, and the money makes the laws, if general public wants a law, they have to pay the lobbyists for it.
When I'm sitting around a campfire, I always go out of my way to make sure everyone is comfortable.
The eastside of Milwaukee is the lakeshore, it is lined with mansions, parks and skyscrapers it is the wealthiest part of the city, westside is the hood.
Where I live is the opposite to this - east is the desirable side of town. I think this is because it's an agricultural area, not industrial, so there wasn't the pollution blown by the wind.
💝 A young, optimistic, highly educated Black man attempting to appeal to the more Inclusive, higher nature of his fellow Americans. During his talk, my anger & cynicism remained silent. His words & attitude were: HUMBLING. 🗿 (S.F.)
I prefer the system that benefits those who help themselves.
Atlanta?
It's actually West Philadelphia that's on the the wrong side of the tracks, because those who were born and raised there know that there are a lot of guys that are up to no good, that start making trouble in the neighbourhood.
I’m confused. The east side of one community is right beside the west side of their neighbours.
Great speech applauded
Great talk
He's a very good orator
Wrong side of tracks in every city I've lived in has been the south side.
Nice thoughts, but I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks (well under the poverty line) in a single-parent household with two children, and had no impediments whatsoever in climbing quite far up the socioeconomic ladder, so I have a hard time relating to any of this. And my sister made it just fine, too, by the way. Sure, it took hard work, but it wasn't any harder than the work put in by those who started out on the right side of the tracks. And no, I'm not white, so there was no white privilege for me, and in my time (coming of age in the late 1980s) I never saw any evidence of its existence anyway.
Putting aside luck, which always plays a role for everyone, it all comes down to what you do, not what others have done to you. If you let yourself feel disadvantaged somehow and then use that as an excuse for not trying to do better, then you won't do better. If you join a gang or start abusing drugs and committing crimes just because you live in the less desirable part of town, then you'll have to live with the consequences of making such bad choices.
I realize that not everyone has the inner strength and will to resist the negative influences around them. I'm just saying that if you do, then there is nothing else holding you back from making a better life for yourself. The bad parenting and bad subcultures that are found in the bad neighborhoods are what help perpetuate this division between the haves and have-nots. Having bad infrastructure and dirty, ugly looking living spaces aren't great, either, but they aren't the real problem, which is social in nature. Those who are a part of or related to bad subcultures in some way (such as race) need to have honest, earnest conversations about what is really going on instead of always blaming whitey and trying to guilt-trip him and take from him.
Whitey never held me back in any way, and we get along just fine. In fact, there were some white people I knew from the wrong side of the tracks who made the same journey I did from poverty to prosperity. So it's not about race, per se, but to the extent that certain races aren't doing nearly as well as others overall, what really needs to be addressed are the associated negative subcultures. But sadly it seems that people aren't willing to do that. Their public "leaders" would much rather just blame whites. More broadly there are groups like the Democrats who have a stake in keeping poor people of certain races and ethnicities poor so that they can buy votes with handouts of taxpayer money, and they blame whites for everything to make it look like they are on the side of the poor and downtrodden, when in fact they are just using them to gain power and want to keep them right where they are. That's a big reason why hardly anything has changed for the better, and maybe things are getting worse.
Take it from someone who actually made it out of poverty (and without any undue difficulty)--you don't need anyone's handouts and there is no advantage to blaming others for your problems, especially when it's not even their fault. And don't be distracted by silly, irrelevant things like which side of the tracks you start out on and which way the wind blows--none of that is holding you back. There are, however, people who will try to hold you back because they're using you, namely the Democrats. Don't listen to what they say and don't let them use you to divide the country--just do what successful people do and you will be successful. I've seen this work over and over again, and I've done it myself.
Best comment on here. And the fact that no one paid any attention to it is very telling.
The east side of Milwaukee is far more wealthy than the west side. The city is divided by a river not a train and the property closer to the lake is in far higher demand than on the west side.
In Pittsburgh there are very wealthy communities east of the downtown, but most are more North like Shady Side and Squirrel Hill, It tends to be the polluted Mon Valley and turtle Creek in the South east that is the poorest places like Duquesne and McKeesport, while the Allegheny and Monroeville/Murrysville are quite successful.
NE Portland & Gresham (way east)
I was triggered from the beginning. That is not how wind works. He isn't wrong that the general direction of wind in the US does head east, but just Google global wind patterns and notice that the winds are not all going east.
Really interesting. Thanks @ted for this great service.
Weird. Canadian here and totally applies! Trippy.
It is because west side hills face the morning sun, the phenomenon existed before trains or smokestacks.
why is there always a random baby walking around by itself in those areas? i have to go to a lot of run down areas for jobs and i swear random babies walking around is a normal thing there, i called the police once to let them know and see if they could track down the parents and the officer on the phone just chuckled and asked "you dont come round here much do you?" what a strange place
The audience clapped, got up, got in their BMWs, and drove home to their gated communities on the west side
Its food for thought... but oversimplified. The issues are far deeper and historical...
east side of St Paul, MN: same story.
personal thing that blew my mind: playing city-building games (Cities: Skylines, specifically), i always put industrial zones on the east side of a city i’m building. never thought about why.. till now.
It might also be because English speakers are trained to look left to right, and so you put the most important information on the left subconsciously. (Assuming you look at the game in a typical North top way)
gnihton interesting. it’s all a great reminder of just how intricate the reasons behind something seemingly benign can be. the world is very, very complicated. .. i think i need to lay down..
Not in Tucson and Phoenix Arizona! The East Part of Town is where the money is. I live in Scottsdale and it is much nicer than West Phoenix! In Tucson it is the Foothills with all that Snow Bird Money!
The wrong side in Australia is the far side from the sea, the further, the hotter.
if it is, as he says, a simple matter of the wind then would you not expect to see a disparity between the entire east and west of a country as a whole? The west of each city borders the east of the previous one and so should there be the same cause and effect in that situation?
Not quite. In Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane Australia it's the western suburbs
Plunger King said that’s coz Australia is upside down
Des Moines, Iowa is like this divided by the river. Interesting.
I thought about that years ago. I'm from Montreal and the west side is the upper Anglos and the east side is the blue collar french-canadian. Separating the two is oil refineries and industrial parks..
Thanks, I've been wondering this same thing myself, only I never had enough free time to do the research myself.
In Rochester, NY it's the West Side of the Genesse River.
If the wind goes to the East direction, WHY is there hurricanes and storms from Atlantic Ocean heading to Western hemisphere?
He doesn't provide any solutions; but I think that he was possibly suggesting that people with money and power, the people who run cities and design infrastructure, need to change their attitudes to the East-Side / poorer neighbourhoods because most of the industry that was causing these areas to smell bad or have smokey air are gone. So they should invest accordingly.
Airports are usually designed to fart out all their exhaust towards the east too.
East Lansing made the list, but median family income there is $88k per year, versus Lansing at $41k.
Actually it's usually the Southside. South Houston. South Dallas. South Chicago. South L.A. South Bronx. South Philadelphia
Clarence Dixon
South phoenix
You're right that you're not the only one to notice it, and that it's here in the UK. I always assumed in London it was to do with the River Thames. But struggled to see why it was more widespread.
Are you saying, then, that this phenomenon is apparent on both East and West coasts of the US? Interesting.
FASCINATING!!! Interesting observation!
Thank you Stephen! Very insightful!
Very interesting!
I live in and redevelop in the inland empire. The east end of SoCal. The valley of smog. I can tell you with certainty that no matter how good of a job I do on my low end homes, no one pays for the upgrades. They want the minimum viable product. This isn’t saying we can’t have a fair distribution of infrastructure, but at the individual property level, lower income buyers don’t want to pay for improvements regardless of their ability to afford it. No matter how fair we distribute the infrastructure you still have cheaper lend in less desirable areas based on view, proximity to jobs, etc. Capitalism is Fair not Equal.
the wind can blow in different directions
*The price of real estate with a "sunset view" probably doesn't help, either.*
Shhhh, no logic here, only outrage.
No. The worst part of Jakarta is at the north part of the city. The worst part of Surabaya is also at the north part of the city. The worst part of Bandung is also at the north. Some said that Eastern of Indonesia is less developed than the Western of Indonesia. However if we locate the map, the wealthiest part of Indonesia is Java, and Java is at the south side of the country. You only see it from Europe and North American perspective.
Permaculture should be the new design because the most radical thing you can do is grow your own food. Village Homes in Davis California is a 45 year old living model of how it can work.
What's the Dot in Utah?.. not on the list.
Very interesting. I live in the UK. My city is the complete opposite. The West side is the wrong side of the river. The East side is cleaner, more modern, better schools, better houses etc.
Oslo is opposite, east side is the traditionally expensive side. Wonder if the shape of the fjord and city made a difference. Probably more to do with outlook points, good farming and good ports.
The video is subjective in every point.
Except Miami
Who should design them?
Choice choice choice. When will some choose to take care of themselves and stop expecting everyone else to do it for them.
FINALLY MY ONLY QUESTION IN LIFE IS ANSWERED!
Hmmm that is an interesting thing to notice. So why not just put the big polluters on the east side and the people on the west side? Oh right because these things are already in place.
As for camp fire smoke, we just say "white rabbit white rabbit go away" the smoke listens. Maybe if all the people on the east side say it then the earth will start spinning in the other direction!
The problem with his campfire graphic is that generally the pollution comes from many sources, not just one camp fire
Funny, the city I live in it's the west side of town that is run down and unpleasant whereas the east side has the higher income and better everything
I guess ocean front property on the east coast is really cheap? Cool. I know lakefront property in Chicago, which is in the east, is quite expensive. How does he explain this?
Thank you brother for speaking truth to power and shedding light on the darkness.
Just saying 'truth to power' shows me you are an SJW.
Well structured argument. I like the disparity by design idea
It's not disparity by design, it is logical consequences of development It is not race based, it is class based. The crappy sides of any town will be populated by the poorest, regardless of color, so the INSINUATION that this is a disparity by design BASED on RACE is race-baiting. Do you think the shipyard workers in Belfast, N. Ireland live where they live because that is where the English industrialists wanted the non-existent Black workers to live? It is not always about YOU, not always about race.
The real problem is that we're too set in our ways as a whole. Blame is not with the communities. It's with the banks and corporations that keep low income families rooted in these areas. Poverty has twisted these areas into places that no one wants to live or bring business to.
Very good video
East Dallas, East Plano
East Palo Alto is impoverished because of the smoke from factories in Palo Alto?