If you looked nationally at wealth vs proximity to traffic, I would wager the "people with the least amount of money" are not the closest to traffic; are you suggesting otherwise? If only because of all the wealth that has come to cities in the last 20-25 yrs. Within that already wealthy urban demo I would agree, yes, the poorer wealthy are nearer to urban highways and thoroughfare than the wealthier wealthy.
"In the United States, it is widely accepted that economically disadvantaged and minority populations share a disproportionate burden of air pollution exposure and risk (26,27). A growing body of evidence demonstrates that minority populations and persons of lower socioeconomic status experience higher residential exposure to traffic and traffic-related air pollution than nonminorities and persons of higher socioeconomic status (5,28–31). Two recent studies have confirmed that these racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities also exist on a national scale (32,33)."
It's not surprising that minorities would be exposed to more traffic given the proportion that live in urban areas, but that doesn't rule out that the poorest in the country (minorities and whites) are not the most exposed. I guess my basic question is, are the poorest people still living in city centers? In my city the central, densest areas became some of the wealthiest, the quieter outlying areas the poorest.
> …that doesn't rule out that the poorest in the country (minorities and whites) are not the most exposed.
Setting aside race, to me it seems like "economically disadvantaged populations share a disproportionate burden of traffic-related air pollution exposure" makes this pretty clear. <shrug>
It's not 1950, everyone on this site has a 1+ GFLOP machine so there's no need to squash a bunch of independent variables down to one dimension or as you call it "set aside race." Unless you're not a hacker, that is.
Even into the 1960s wealthy black people were prevented from buying and living in the 'good' parts of even northern US cities.
Care to enlighten us as to the second paragraph? I only found some misc stuff, nothing appearing to be systemic or enshrined in law. In fact I see laws against such things being enforced more than lamented in searches.
Why do you assume that fine particulate is at the highest in city centers? It's often higher than average, but the highest is frequently outside of the city center, where highways have been constructed through pre-existing, poorer neighborhoods. The South Bronx is the famous example of this[1].
In Seattle, in the densest parts of the city are glass towers that certainly have filtered HVAC, and the poorest parts of the city are relatively low-density areas near the port (particulates from diesel trucks and ships), the cement plant, the nucor steel plant, the highly polluted duwamish river, and boeing field.
> I guess my basic question is, are the poorest people still living in city centers?
I suppose that there likely are small numbers of people living far outside of cities and away from traffic, like up in the mountains of Appalachia or living off the grid in tents or in communes deep in forests, who are poorer than people you'd typically find in urban areas, but it's still the poor in the US who are dealing with the worst of the harms traffic causes compared to the better off/wealthy. They're also the least able to mitigate those harms or deal with the fallout caused by them.
