Were the west/north sides also the higher-altitude sides?

Hmm. Texas - yes. And the prettier side. Florida - no. Michigan - I don't think so. (Michigan is my shakiest data point because I always found Ann Arbor confusing and don't really know the neighborhoods unless they're near the university.)

In my town the Southwestern corner is the richest and the Northwestern section of town is where there's been a bunch of sprawling construction of cheap apartments. But that's mostly a function of geography.

it's a cliche that south and east are poor, no?

Not in the east, no. Who was it that got in trouble for talking about the mean streets of South Philly?

I got into a really aggravating argument once where I mentioned the 7-growth factoid (of which I really don't even know what it means). The other person started spouting counter-examples with significant geographical restrictions - Chicago, New York - and I got really irritated because I don't know any cities that fit the 7 model, but his counter-evidence was stupid.

I have no idea where the richest part of town is. If I take it to be city+outlying county, the richest parts are the horse farms, because that's where the rich people (including The Rock!) put their horse farms.

What about the east side, then? Isn't the quickest way to signal "We've Got A Low Income High School" in a movie script to name it Eastside High*?

(I attended an Eastside High! Because I'm down with la gente. Or because I went to an IB program purposefully located on the poor side of town so that the school would look better on paper.)

Let's see:

LA -- south and east poor
NY -- doesn't really apply? ("East New York" is poor)
Chicago -- south=poor
London -- east=traditionally poor
Paris -- east=poorer than west
San Francisco -- everyone is rich or homeless, but I guess south is traditionally poorer
Boston -- geography is confusing to me, but I guess Southie is traditionally poor
Baltimore -- Proposition Joe controls the East, Marlo Stanfield the West
DC -- South and East generally poorer
Berlin -- Used to need a secret balloon escape to get from East to West

I'm having a hard time coming up with a counterexample.

I never heard the south/east thing before -- I'd think it'd be controlled by local geography. Also the '7' thing, which I'm not sure I understand: do you mean that there's an east-west axis, and a southwest-northeast axis, and lower density everywhere not on those two lines? Or is orientation unimportant? But anyway, I don't think I can think of any '7' shaped cities.

I think on the other side of the Bay (ie, Oakland and Berkeley), the nicest homes are in the hills and thus east.

This reminded me of the summer that I painted fences in an apartment complex. I drove east on Old Georgetown Road/East-West Highway into the sunrise in the morning and west into the sunset coming home. I was blinded by the light.

Eastern parts of Vancouver tend to be poorer, but there are wealthy neighborhoods in the south.

Yes Oakland is a good counterexample EXCEPT that I think North Oakland (i.e. Rockridge, areas near Piedmont) beat the South.

I've never heard of a particular side of a city being poor. "Eastside High" would mean that it's in a city. In Wilkes-Barre the east part is where all the commerce has moved to and the north side is poor. In Pittsburgh ... what do you mean exactly? The direction in which the suburbs develop? Or the city itself?

West Detroit beats East Detroit. And contra Journey there is no "South Detroit."

Yeah, west Oakland, west Berkeley - definitely not the wealthiest parts of town.

13: Yes, but then you have Richmond to the north and west of Rockridge .... does it count if they're continuous cities, rather than neighborhoods within cities?

Also the '7' thing, which I'm not sure I understand: do you mean that there's an east-west axis, and a southwest-northeast axis, and lower density everywhere not on those two lines?

I guess? I never really understood, but I guessed standard orientation. Of course, if it's an Unfogged city it would require an extra hyphen or development across the middle.

Um, I meant north and west of Berkeley, though of course they are also north and west of Rockridge as well. (But isn't Rockridge kind of in the hills, anyway?)

Also, Albany is a weird example in the middle there - cheaper than Berkeley, in some ways nicer than west Berkeley, but not as nice as the hills.

The rule seems to hold for San Diego, Houston, and Dallas.

It doesn't hold for NY in any coherent way -- richer and poorer neighborhoods are spotty, but some poorer areas are north.

I'm really not seeing either of these at all, particularly the 7 thing.

The Oakland hills run northwest-southeast, so there are some fairly well-off neighborhoods to the far southeast. The richest zipcodes are indeed Piedmont and Montclair, though.

In terms of suburbs, east of Pittsburgh is where you don't want to live. As for the actual city, I think it's more the north side where you don't want to live. And of course the live.

The South Side of Columbus is definitely the poorer part of town.

7: could have to do with movies getting made in LA.

The poorest zipcode in Berkeley, after studentland, is the farthest west - west of San Pablo, Gilman to Ashby.

I dunno, the South or East thing seems surprisingly accurate. What are our counterexamples so far:

Philly
Maybe Oakland
Doesn't apply in a very coherent way to NY
Wilkes-Barre

I call shenanigans. I don't see any basis for calling either of the claims a general rule.

It doesn't hold for NY in any coherent way -- richer and poorer neighborhoods are spotty, but some poorer areas are north.

When I was little, I found it so confusing that people claimed Manhattan was an island. Looking at the map inside the cab clearly showed that it was a peninsula.

I've only been to Cleveland once, but maybe that's a counterexample?

Where I grew up, there was a strip of very expensive housing at the extreme west (ie, beach side), a middle zone of poor to 'normal,' and an eastern zone of rich to upper middle class, with the occasional poor pocket thrown in.

Vancouver's a counterexample according to 12.

The west side of Louisville is the poorer side and the eastern suburbs are the nicer ones. (I grew up in the southwestern suburbs.)

Cincy is not the only city that blows this by being built on a river. West and east both poor in spots, west more than east I'd think, and north richer, south is KY though.

OT (sorry) but since Halford is here, my brother is going to be moving to LA this month and is looking for advice about where to live and how to find someone who will want him as a roommate. He's 26 and a hipster, basically, and probably hoping to do music stuff, doesn't have job plans (though a history with American Apparel that might transfer maybe) and has broken up with the girlfriend with California connections. I'd be grateful for any advice to pass on. Email is motherissues at the good old google mail spot.

What are our counterexamples so far:

Add Salt Lake area to that list. The mountains run north/south here. The east side is definitely the affluent side.

Miami is another counterexample.

32 -- I think you get to count either poorer south or poorer east as examples. Also IIRC isn't there not much development north of Vancouver b/c you hit mountains?

30: For the east thing, pretty much. North/south the Lake messes up. Dayton is smaller Ohio city that breaks it both ways and is about the purest example of that I can think of offhand. Memphis certainly east/west, and somewhat north/south as well.

For suburbs, someone's cut at it in the US.

34.last: Echo Park it is.

Pittsburgh is a counterexample but obviously features many geographical features that influence this sort of thing.

Pittsburgh neighborhoods

The eastern neighborhoods between the two rivers are where everyone wants to live. However once you get outside the city, the southern and eastern suburbs are the most depressed.

West is pretty isolated. The affluent suburbs are either north or south.

38 looks pretty definitively disproving it.

It doesn't apply in a very coherent way to Boston, although most of the identifiable-by-non-locals historically poorer areas (southie, Dorchester, Roxbury) are south of the city, and most of the richer suburbs are roughly west to northwest. On the other hand, on the east is the ocean, which is filled with riches.

"the southern and eastern suburbs are the most depressed." I meant southeastern and eastern. All along the Monongahela are the now-empty towns like the one in The Deer Hunter.

I thought that the "east side is poor" thing comes from industrial boom towns where the east side is down wind of the factory. East St. Louis and Kansas City Missouri are the examples here.

The north side of Paris is more dangerous than the south. Baltimore is mostly nicer closer to the water than inland, so east nicer than west more often than not. North side of Saint Louis is black, higher crime rates than the white south side. The general claim is BS.

Possibly a bunch of US cities support it because of orientation to the wealthier East coast, so any industrial railroad yards would be on the East side. Similarly, since the south had basically no industry in the 19th century and not much in the way of cities, orientation to NYC in the US was what actually mattered.

Ah, I'm glad to hear that it's somewhat rooted in a real fact.

34 -- yeah, I'd say Echo Park or Highland Park. Koreatown or MacArthur Park have lots of cheap places and would make working on the Westside easier, but you've got to be pretty careful about location and building. Downtown is very fun these days for a 26 year old hipster.

I have no idea where to look for a roommate, probably on Craig's List; Westside Rentals was the place to look for an apartment (not just on the Westside) the last time I looked.

No. This is silly.

37: Thank you. I am passing that on now. He spent a little time in LA a year ago trying to start this process, but then decided to travel around South America with the girlfriend, not that I blame him.

44: That may be a potential general rule in midwestern industrial towns (prevailing west winds) barring other factors. In Cleveland, the higher terrain is in the east (the very beginnings of the Allegheny Plateau), Memphis has Arkansas to the west (and the river to get across).

Plus I have significant work on tight deadlines today, heebie you jerk!

All along the Monongahela are the now-empty towns like the one in The Deer Hunter.

Right, and there is a tunnel to limit traffic coming in from the suburban east that has caused most of the new suburbs to be built elsewhere. Keeps up property values in the East End of the city proper.

Also IIRC isn't there not much development north of Vancouver b/c you hit mountains?

North Vancouver (probably more than you wanted to know).

Anyway, "significant geographical restrictions" tends to apply to a pretty large fraction of cities, since cities tend to be built on oceans or lakes or rivers.

Right, and there is a tunnel to limit traffic coming in from the suburban east that has caused most of the new suburbs to be built elsewhere. Keeps up property values in the East End of the city proper.

Why is it that Frankstown Road is basically not a thoroughfare to anywhere? That doesn't have a tunnel.

There's plenty of suburban land between Homewood and the turnpike that contains not a single town I've ever heard of before. Rosedale? Shannon Heights? Penn Ridge? Blackridge? Alcoma? What goes on in these places?

In Geneva the east side is the wealthy, or rather wealthier one with both the traditional super high end apartment neighbourhood southeast of the city center and the super high end villa neighbourhoods running up along the east side of the lake. I always found the latter a bit strange since the views are _much_ nicer on the western shore where you get a panoramic view of the highest part of the Alps plus the lake instead of the Jura plus the lake. In Warsaw the eastern side of the river is traditionally the poorer one, though the district due west of the city center is also a traditionally working class area.

New York's expensive neighbourhoods have migrated so much over the past century and a half that I'm not sure there is a meaningful answer, but the only consistently wealthy areas are on the East side of Manhattan.

54: It takes forever to get far enough out to be in a school district without poor people.

Oakland isn't a perfect counter example: the hills are posher, but the bulk of the ghetto is in the S/SE. There's a pocket of deep ghetto in the Nw, but even the hills in East Oakland aren't so hot.

Ah, I'm glad to hear that it's somewhat rooted in a real fact.

I really don't think it is.

54.2: They are all in Penn Hills.

Why is it that Frankstown Road is basically not a thoroughfare to anywhere?

Frankstown Rd. is a demented twisty goat path to nowhere (actually one of the best examples you can find of a narrow interfluve road along much of its length). Eastern affluent suburbs used to be Churchill & Edgewood (and many, many years ago, Wikinsburg)--now Murrysville for the exurban tax-haters and recently Penn Twp for the noveau exurbanites.

I really don't think it is.

Now don't be contrarian.

35: Yup, yup.

59: Highway 30 in Westmoreland past the airport is my go-to example of an interfluve road.

Here's a hypothesis: heebie said something really silly and wrong in order to bring life to the blog. Look at all these comments in only an hour.

60: It's funny what I can be trolled by. Genuinely offensive or importantly wrong positions on significant issues, I can usually engage with dispassionately. Random assertions of fact, approached with an "well, prove it's not true," attitude, make my adrenal glands flood my body with flight or fight hormones. This post has me wanting to shriek "Someone is wrong, wrong, wrong on the internet!"

Not sure about London - if anything, the rich residential areas are either central or southwest. Northwest is Brent and Haringey; southwest is Richmond and Fulham and Kingston.

In Edinburgh the north is Leith, run by, essentially, Proposition Jock, and the south is the rich areas like Bruntsfield and Morningside.

make my adrenal glands flood my body with flight or fight hormones.

(Probably not literally the case.)

Fun thing to do on a long slow train ride from DC to Atlanta: Form the window views, try to determine in each small town which side is the good side of the tracks and which side isn't. Often easy to do even at speed.

My recollection is that in North Carolina the tracks ran straight East/West, and the South side was generally slummier. But there were exceptions.

On the Raritan Valley line in New Jersey, there is a string of "South side bad" towns. The rule may work best in smaller towns, not big cities.

I didn't know towns in New Jersey had good sides.

Frankstown Rd. is a demented twisty goat path to nowhere

It will take you within a half mile of the Whole Foods.

And then taunt you by abruptly turning in the other direction.

These maps are for race, not income, but I'm told they correlate.

62: I think you have your counties wrong, bro'. It's Beaver if you are referring to Pittsburgh Int'l. And also Rt. 30 through Westmoreland is actually an example of a road that mainly goes straight across watersheds and ridges (or through one along a creek for Chestnut Ridge (by Idlewild)).

Areas with large proportions of Black/Hispanic folx:

NY: NE and SE
LA: SE
Chicago: S
Houston: E
Philly: N and W
Phoenix: SW
San Diego: SE
Dallas: S
San Antonio: S
Detroit: ?? Central, really
San Jose: E
Indianapolis: NE maybe
SF: SE
Jacksonville: N
Columbus: E
Austin: S and E
Balmer: ?? Central
Memphis: W and S
Milwaukee: NW
Boston: S
DC: E
Seattle: SE
Denver: ?? Central
Portland: None

Detroit: NSEW
Memphis: NSEW

72: I meant the part by Idlewild and past toward the east. However, I have no real idea of what "interfluve" means. I just know you drive along a creek for a fair bit if you go that way.

What are cities where the NW quadrant is the bad area? We have

Philly
Milwaulkee
Maybe Edinbugh

and that's it so far, I think.

What standards are you applying? Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx are north of the rich parts of Manhattan.

But not substantially West of them.

New Orleans is an interesting case because all directional words are meaningless owing to people acting like the Mississippi River and I-10 run north-south (e.g. "the west bank" refers to the bit that is east of the river from downtown).

From the maps, only 6 out of 66 cities - Philly, Milwaukee, Nashville, Charlotte, Tulsa and Baton Rouge - have NW oriented minority neighborhoods.

It doesn't hold for NY in any coherent way

OH I THINK WE KNOW WHICH WAY IS UP.

78: I get the impression that you're counting any poor neighborhood that's either south or east of the center of a city, and any rich neighborhood that's either north or west, as evidence for the proposition, and only cities where the entire northwest quadrant is poorer than the entire southeast quadrant as evidence against.

Using that standard makes the proposition you're testing a fairly weak one: "In a large number of cities, there are at least some poor neighborhoods in the southern or eastern parts of the city."

80: Memphis?

Virginia Beach?

In support of LB's appeal to nuance, Boston has crappy (if not historically minority) suburbs to the north, northwest and northeast.

Louisville?

But primarily, this makes no sense at all. Why would the fact that the American South is poorer than the Northeast make the south side of Buffalo poorer than the north side? There's no mechanism. It's nonsense.

Miami's an exception, with a poor north side and a richer (and more suburban) south. In Chicago the west side is even poorer than the south side, though the northwest and southwest is not. The poorest parts of Albuquerque are the southwest areas along the river and parts of the southeast.

Boston has crappy suburbs everywhere.

Miami's an exception

I am hyperventilating here. What exception? Why exception? This is not an actual rule -- it is complete horse hockey.

87: Buffalo's poor areas are in direct relation to the steel mills, I think, which I assume went on the south side of the city because that gave them lake access rather than river access. And also there are a lot of microclimates and I assume the nicer ones are more full of wealthy people than the (relatively) less pleasant winters.

90: horse hockey? Huh. I never knew.

Anyhow we seem to be honing in on a pretty ironclad rule, LB.

I'm not talking about Buffalo specifically, just about the lunacy of thinking that there's some kind of nationwide force drawing the poor areas to the southeast quadrant of metropolitan areas. It's always going to be about local history and geography.

Interestingly, horse hockey is more popular in northern regions. Could this be the causus pauperti we seek?

93: Don't think I won't come up to Boston to cut you.

96: yes, yes. You poor southerners are full of empty threats.

This was mentioned up-thread, but suuposedly it has to do with the prevailing winds blowing pollution to the east.
http://www.thejanuarist.com/why-are-the-east-of-cities-usually-poorer/

I will admit that horse hockey is something that bubbled up from whatever dark recesses of my mind that are devoted to M*A*S*H reruns. I don't think I've ever heard anyone but Colonel Potter say it.

I thought Col. Potter said "horse puckey", though. At least, that's why I've always said "horse puckey". But it turns out "horse hockey" is probably more correct!

99: Colonel Potter was what came to my mind also.

Memphis and Va Beach are pretty much W, so those are counterexamples. I'll give you Louisville too.

I've also been limiting it to actual city limits, not suburbs.

82
Though it is admittedly qualitative, it is not just "there are at least some poor neighborhoods in the southern or eastern parts of the city". Most of them it's easy to eyeball a center of mass for Black/Hispanic populations and determine its location relative to the city center. Some are ambiguous, of course, but NY is definitely not. Queens and the Bronx are definitely W of city center.

I mean E.

But I guess I was wrong?!

98: If you look at that page, it's an unsupported assertion about the east side usually being poorer, and then commenters with a list of specific counterexamples.

You can't start talking about why something's true until you've got some basis for believing that it is true. I'm about to start waving my hands in the air like Kermit the Frog here.

Don't think I won't come up to Boston to cut you.

Meetup at Lord Hobo!

Meetup at Lord Hobo!

Perilously close to East Cambridge.

102.last: But also North, and NY is confused because the city 'center' is also the western extreme of the city -- no neighborhood is west of downtown Manhattan. If you look at the geographical center of the five boroughs, it's in Queens someplace, and Harlem is totally northwest of it.

some kind of nationwide force

Alert the physicists!

Did Kermit just not care?

98: The guideline I've often heard is "cities grow into the wind". While there are exceptions (eg: Visalia, which located its wastewater plant in the north has defied the typical rule), it's a commonly acknowledged trend.

City policies, county development guidelines (general plans), incentives, and local geography all play a part, but newer (often wealthier) neighborhoods will be where the wind blows.

Guideline in 111 is the exact opposite of the guideline in 44, if I'm reading it right.

I'm about to start waving my hands in the air like Kermit the Frog here.

Post video!

I guess we all know exactly how to troll LB now.

108

The population center of NYC is in Maspeth, Queens, and the geographic center is in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Draw a N/S line and compare what's E and W of the line and you find that all of the white parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn are to the West of it.

I read 44 and 111 as agreeing: new buildings are upwind of the existing city (including factories, etc.). In CA, East St. Louis and Kansas City, it sounds like towns (with their industries) grew north and west to get out of their smoke and factory exhaust.

Not right for Dublin. North Dublin and West Dublin are mostly poor, or seen as such (apart from a few wealthy pockets). South Dublin the opposite. The city doesn't really have an East Dublin; the narrow eastern coastal strips are prosperous.
http://www.rossocarrollkelly.ie/Pics/Ext/RossGuide.pdf

honing in on

My boss says this all the time. It makes me a) think of you guys and b) want to yell at him.

And so are a bunch of black and hispanic parts of Manhattan. And a bunch of white parts of Queens are east of it.

118: Good.

I still use it, because it's fine, as previously discussed.

I always say "puckey in on it."

Consider my 96 incorporated by reference into all future communications.

What are we counting as 'city' for NYC? And are we saying now, or thirty years ago, or in the twenties or what? If it's just NYC proper, the city's center in the non literal sense is right up against its western border. To the extent it isn't, the area due west of midtown was traditionally extremely poor and crime ridden. Harlem was not a poor area when it was built. My neighbourhood, well SE of midtown was extremely wealthy from the mid nineteenth century through the 1870's or so, upper middle class at the turn of the century, poor and black for most of the second half of the twentieth, then very varied in terms of class and black at the most recent turn of the century, and now rapidly turning solid upper middle class and majority white.

If you define NYC as including the inner suburbs, then just NE of the Bronx you get extreme wealth, while due west of Manhattan you get a mix of everything but with lots of old dead industrial towns, some now reinvented as gentrifying urban suburbs.

Shorter version: LB is absolutely right.

I would be curious to see this quantified by calculating population centers for each race in each city and seeing where they end up relative to each other. It's pretty obvious for NY that the white center is west of the black and Hispanic centers.

And I'm pwned

125: If we're drawing the line at the five boroughs, then the center of population for white New Yorkers is probably west, but also probably south, of the center of population for black and hispanic New Yorkers -- the dense white parts of the city are downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. Using it as support for the theory in the post, it's a wash.

Here's a hypothesis: heebie said something really silly and wrong in order to bring life to the blog. Look at all these comments in only an hour.

And that, folks, is why I make the big bucks.

Although actually, all I asserted is that it's a cliche, not that it's true. Between movies being made in LA, and Helpy-Chalk/extexan in 98, that has been substantiated.

Also MooseKing.

Using it as support for the theory in the post, it's a wash

I think one version of the theory, such as it is, is that either South OR East portions of cities have a disproportionate tendency to be the location of the bad neighborhoods (not the exclusive location, just a tendency), which seems to be surprisingly (though not absolutely) true -- 9/66 neighborhoods on the map listed by F would seem to suggest that this is surprisingly accurate for US cities, though not without exceptions.

I think LB cares so much because she's so NYC-centric, despite not having grown up there and always trying to get people to forget that. That and because she's passionate about the subtleties of work appropriate wise fashion choices.

By the way, in Los Angeles the tendency for wealth to move away from where industrial smoke went is absolutely right, at least as a generalization; the areas to the North and West are richer because (except for the Santa Anas) the industrial smells would get pushed east and up against the hills, and because the port and industrial development surrounding it were in the South.

It's plausible that this applied to development patterns in other cities in the late 19th-20th centuries, that some of this pattern endured through deindustrialization, and that prevailing winds were a big part of the story.

This is a thing that I have seen mentioned in academic work on the Industrial Revolution. Not that that makes it true or anything, but. And not that I can remember why it could be true, or where I read it.

9/66 neighborhoods on the map listed by F would seem to suggest that this is surprisingly accurate for US cities, though not without exceptions.

If you look at 80, he's saying that only 9/66 have a minority neighborhood located in the northwest quadrant. (A) I think he left some out, which I listed above, and (B) not clearly in the northwest is not the same as clearly in the southeast -- there are a bunch of cities where you couldn't say minority neighborhood unambiguously NW or SE.

94: I know you weren't talking about specifics, but since I half-know the specifics there I figured I'd mention them since they go to your point that there's more going on than some kind of cryptoMasonic city planning that privileges certain cardinal directions.

they go to your point that there's some kind of cryptoMasonic city planning that privileges certain cardinal directions

Oh shit! That's it. Damn you, L'Enfant! Damn you through all time!

I would totally believe that there was a consistent pattern for rich neighborhoods in industrial cities to be upwind of the industrial region (although I'd expect that effect to be lessening given that it's been several decades since industrial areas were terribly smoky). And that prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere are more often from the west than from the east. But that's a rule that's going to be about the local prevailing winds and location of smelly industry, not generally about the points of the compass, and while there might be a more-locations-than-not east-west tendency to the winds, I don't buy a general north-south tendency.

In short, if this thesis had been presented from the beginning as a matter of downwind vs. upwind, it would have seemed logical and maybe even intuitive, whereas it actually seemed bizarre since it was presented as a matter of "driving into the sun" vs. "driving away from the sun".

given that it's been several decades since industrial areas were terribly smoky

From the Wikipedia entry on the economy of NYC, which I looked up to try to say something in this post: "examples of goods manufactured in the city include broadway costumes, custom-made cabinets, croissant for hotels, and wooden crates for shipping fine art."

Minneapolis: Northside is poor (used to be Jewish, now Black), Southside has always been wealthy. Nordeast (which is what in any other town would be "North"), used to be working class, now heavily gentrified. "Southeast" -- i.e. Northeast -- also formerly working class/light industrial, now all students and professors.

St Paul: Eastside is poor. South St Paul is working class, and a separate city. There isn't really a Northside as such. Lots of weird little suburbs.

Suburban Twin Cities: All the inner-ring suburbs, except those to the southwest of Mpls., are becoming more working/lower-middle class. The exurbs are empty. The main belt of wealthy suburbs is fairly uniform all the way around, even where it swings into Wisconsin.

Omaha: South and North are poor, Hispanic and Black respectively. East is Council Bluffs, where all the pron lives. West, Southwest and Northwest just keep going and going and get more and more boring.

All my Omaha relatives are now past 100th Street. I can't even find my way around there because I'm not used to going past Westroads.

it's been several decades since industrial areas were terribly smoky

And in NYC now you can't even purchase Big Gulps near them!

The biggest ski chalets in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, are upslope - towards the west, and towards the tram and main lift area - north. The smaller chalets are nearest the valley - east - and south.

Miami's an exception, with a poor north side and a richer (and more suburban) south

The City of Miami or Miami-Dade?

Because most of Miami Lakes, North Miami Beach, Miami Shores, Biscayne Park, pretty much all of the living communities and condos along Biscayne Boulevard, and Aventura aren't poor.

142: There are neighborhoods in western Omaha where you must make 5 left turns in order to get to your destination. It's like Castrovalva or The Hotel Babylon in Deep Secrets or something.

Maybe the mountains require such paths.

I assumed there were dozens of Omaha-related lurkers who would chime in on this but I guess I was wrong.

144 is cracking me up. In the town of Aspen, the houses are mostly to the north and west while the south and east are mostly hotels and vacation apartments.

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

If you go east in Chicago, you start to see a lot of very low-income fish.

whereas it actually seemed bizarre since it was presented as a matter of "driving into the sun" vs. "driving away from the sun".

Wait, no, this is two separate points. I think you should live to the east, to spare your eyes on your commute.

On an entirely different occasion, I heard the 7 theory. Personally I have known poor East sides. Also it seemed like a cultural cliche. And still does, even if it's not actually true.

the 7 theory

This just boggles me. How could that possibly even work in any kind of general way?

If I told you that Harry Reid used the 7 theory to attack Mitt Romney. . . .

I was at least hoping that someone here would know what I was misremembering and be able to explain what the theory actually is.

It's one of those things that's impossible to google.

Like the rap song from ten years ago that samples Good Vibrations that I'll never be able to locate.

Anyhow, wouldn't we be talking about something more like a Cyrillic Г than a 7?

I meant Roman numerals.

I've posted before about 157. Still tears me up.

For the lower areas of Central East Austin, being part of what was the flood plain of the Colorado River--prior to the construction of the Tom Miller dam--had a lot to do with them being the poor parts of town. E/liot T/retter has given good talks on the politics of how minorities got shifted into the area, which was poor but largely white for most of the 19th and early 20th century.

CLIX to CLIII?

CL: That seems unlikely now that I see it written out.

╠╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╣
╠╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╣
╠╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╣

:Þ

The gold medal two on two volleyball match has two women with compound last names facing two women who don't. They're both US teams, so I hope they deliberately picked partners based on whether or not their mom was following patriarchal naming conventions. Everybody wants to see if feminism is a associated with winning among those with rock hard abs and great butts.

CXLIV is just not displaying on my phone.

157, 160: Questions like that are what AskMe was made for. I've seen a bunch of 'em answered there.

Şǚŗėľŷ ŷőǖ мεąŋ CLXIV?

There are a lot of really stupid songs that sample Good Vibrations.

CLXVIII: Mea culpa.

CLIXX: Good Vibrations is, in a sense, a really stupid song that samples Good Vibrations.

I will fondly remember that Sunkist "Good Vibrations" commercial from the early 1980s for the rest of my life.

CLXV: I'm pretty sure the double-named team is the anti-feminist team, as both of them used to have single names before marriage.

172: Sunkist orange soda taste sensation?

Feh. I hate working late. But I'm done for the night, finally.

Hmm, I left at 8:30 and felt oppressed.

Areas with large proportions of Black/Hispanic folx:
Portland: None

Not really, if you're talking about Portland, OR. Portland is white, but it's not totally white. Most of the Af-Am population is concentrated in neighborhoods of NE/N, the first part of the city where they were allowed to live (Portland has had a weird and regressive racial history), and much of the Hispanic population as well. As far as the rest of it goes, the west side (west of the Willamette) is wealthier, with the biggest money concentrated in the southwest.

The 7 thing? If there were really a 7 thing, wouldn't there be abundant examples a person could point to?

I went home at 5:00, ate dinner with the family, and went to the bar after the kid was asleep. Now, I'm home again, but sweaty because of the humidity.

The best asking place for this type of thing that I know of is metareddit tip of my tongue.

For samples and remixes specifically there is whosampled.com, but none of these here seem to fit your description.

A long shot but this by Grand Daddy I.U. ("Da Veteran") starts right off with the colorful clothes line followed by an irreverent interjection ("Yes, is that right?").

I'm not really concerned about upgrading my knowledge of humidity.

This post is somewhat amusing since I sort of had the "north" and "west" pattern in my mind as a kid since my small city very markedly had exactly that pattern and so 1) it just seemed "natural" to me, and 2) per the above thread there were a decent number of other examples of which I was aware (despite some nearby counterexamples). Also the upwind/downwind theory is somewhat plausible in that instance given the series of somewhat smoky and often stinky factories south and southeast of downtown (of course "the other side of downtown from the factories" whichever direction is plausible as well).

Not something I carried into my adulthood or knew was a potential actual "thing", however.

I know it was covered before, but looking at current NYC patterns is nutty since as I documented here before there has been a very significant flip-flop in the location of NYC poor neighborhoods over the past 70 years (yes, Virginia, Manhattan once had the poorest inhabitants). And there were several significant changes before that.

Ah, here is the data:

Median household income % above or below US average (richest to poorest):

1949:   Queens 45.7%, Staten Island 31.5%, Bronx 25.9%, Brooklyn 20.3%, Manhattan -10.4%

1979:   Staten Island 25.9% Queens 1.1%, Manhattan -17.4%, Brooklyn -29.2%, Bronx -35.0%

2006:   Staten Island 41.6%, Manhattan 23.9%, Queens 5.7%; Brooklyn -16.6%; Bronx -35.0%

Statin Island is doing well because of Lipitor and widespread ignorance of the paleo diet.

I think heebie is just trying to remind us all of Ogged, as she mercilessly trolls the blog. Both theories seem like total nonsense to me.

Also note: East Philadelphia* is in fact Camden, NJ.

*And Kensington, a very poor place, and Northern Liberties, a very rapidly gentrifying place, and Port Richmond, a place full of Albanians....

And while looking up that information, I was amused to find the following from the Stanster in a nearby comment (12-27-10 8:48 PM):

For reasons complicated and unimportant, I've found myself hanging around horse farms a lot lately [emphasis added - JPS].

185: And the Main Line would be ...?

187: West of the city, for starters. (And creeping ever farther westward. Newspapers and real estate agents now contend that Malvern is part of the Main Line. Which it is, in the very narrow sense that the relevant SEPTA's Regional Rail train stops there.)

Demographically, still remarkably old, white, affluent, and Christian, with pockets of exceptions.

Doesn't 185 prove the point? As does 187? And perhaps the Lower East Side? Prevailing winds, baby.

189: No, it's still nonsense. The wealthy neighborhoods in Philadelphia have changed dramatically over the decades. Strawberry Mansion in North Phila is one good example.

It is true that legend has it that the Main Line exists because wealthy families built summer homes along the railroad line, to get away from the heat and disease of the city in summer while allowing the gentleman of the family to commute in town to do his business. Part of that is surely true, as anyone who has seen the former Bryn Mawr Hotel (now the Baldwin School) can attest. But even that is a bit too much of a just-so story, I think.

Time for bed....

wow. 188 comments in and still on topic. masterfully trolled, HG.

As I understand it, many cities have seen big shifts in the locations of wealthy neighborhoods, including a number of cases where the rich were once in the flats, the poor in the hills and then that reversed. No, I'm not going to give any examples because I don't have any offhand. Also, I'm not proposing that there is any rule along these lines.

Also, what about southern hemisphere cities? Can we come up with a rule that includes the coriolis force? (While we're making things up.)

Not really sorry I missed this thread. I had heard the south/east generalization before, but never really bought it. Never heard anything about 7s.

182, 183 somewhat -> 192.

Also, as Angela Lurkel noted in 88, the poorest parts of Albuquerque are to the south; however, the richest parts are to the northeast. Anchorage doesn't fit at all, as South Anchorage is the richest part of town and East Anchorage is one of the richer parts too. The poor neighborhoods here are close to downtown.

I believe the poorest neighborhoods in NY through about 1960 (or when industry started to permanently go) were those immediately adjacent to the most industrial areas, and I'd suspect that pattern holds true for basically all cities that had 19th or 20th century heavy industry (or almost all cities). Obviously the harbor/island aspect of NYC makes the upwind downwind thing less relevant.

Hey, we can be a little more scientific with this mapper. What's the best metric there, percentage of households sub-30K?

197: Yes, I was thinking that for a programming project I could take the census block data and make something like a "wind rose" around each central city using median income or the like.

In Chch it is certainly true that the East is the not-so-nice part of town.

South & West Auckland are not as nice as the North Shore & the Eastern Bays.

Wgtn is too muddled to talk about, and I dunno really about the rest of NZ.

Bozeman. South is better, and east is probably equal to west.

Missoula is more complicated, but the people living in mansions in the SE part of town would have an opinion.

I don't know Great Falls all that well, but my paralegal's stories of her grandmother's impoverished childhood in a predominantly Native northern part of the city aren't leading me to buy the theory.

On the other hand, southeast Billings has oil refineries, a sugar beet plant, a prison, and most of the poorer people.

Speaking of the bad side of town, this is one of my favorite hobo pics. That guy is a frequent flyer with the drinking and all. That's totally how we found him one night, wearing a city issue fire dept. beanie. We have no idea how he got it. Best guess is he somehow snagged it one of the many times the fire guys were out on him.

Birmingham and Manchester, second and third largest cities in England, both have their richer areas to the south. I'm with LB on this one.

Glasgow, for what it's worth, has its poorest areas in the east [both south and north, but especially north] but it doesn't really conform to the exact pattern. It's more multiple concentric rings of wealth/poverty with the axis sort of skewed east. There are very rough bits in the north west which are within a mile or two of the very nicest bits of the city [the West End, etc]. There are also large expanses of massive Victorian villas south of the river which are also fairly close to areas of real poverty.

Another pattern true of NYC and I suspect of many other coastal cities is that in the 19th to mid-20th centuries poorer areas tended to be on or near the waterfront (because that was where the commercial and industrial areas were).

"Water flows uphill towards money", is all I can bring.