You may not have noticed this odd fact before, but the dividing line in most cities between wealthy and poor neighborhoods is east and west. A large part of the population of the eastern areas of cities are less financially well-off and more disadvantaged than those in the western half.
The list of these cities is long, but includes East St. Louis, East Detroit, East Los Angeles., East Lansing, East Orange, and even East Palo Alto. This fact is similar in other countries as well as seen in East London, East Jerusalem, East Paris, and East Vancouver.
The global Industrial Revolution saw its origin around 1760 with the arrival of new technologies in key growth sectors such as textiles, iron, and steam. The consequences of that revolution were not realized until much later. The widespread use of coal as an energy source did not fully accelerate until the 1840s. There was a sharp increase in coal consumption between 1850 and 1910, and that is the period that saw the greatest growth in rural citizens relocating to cities. This period is when the east side/west wide residential sorting in major cities occurred.
Why did this sorting between the settling of the poorest citizens on the east side of towns and the richer folk on the west side of towns happen? It is because of the wind. The Earth rotates counterclockwise, so the wind in both hemispheres blows east. If you are setting up chairs around a campfire, then you should avoid placing your chair to the east of the fire if you don’t like smoke in your face.
Heblich, Trew & Zylberberg released a fascinating study in 2016 titled “East Side Story: Historical Pollution and Persistent Neighborhood Sorting.” It was a geographical study of the location of 5,000 smokestacks in England in 1880. They concluded that because smoke blows to the east, the wealthier folks invariably settled on the west side of cities while the less powerful and more disadvantaged citizens were relegated to the east side. Many cities in America and around the world were settled in this manner as well.
The consumption of coal and its negative environmental effects were curtailed sharply after Britain’s Clean Air Act was passed in 1956. The act introduced regulations that penalized the emissions of coal-produced pollutants. However, the settling and stratifications of city populations had already occurred and has been very difficult to reverse, even half a century later.
This is even where the term “from the wrong side of the tracks” came from. The wrong side of the tracks was usually the east side, which was where the smoke from the trains blew. Although pollution from trains, industrial plants and utility smokestacks have declined considerably since the 1800s, the demographic sorting effect in cities around the world is still visible.
