Fun Maps: Mmmm...New York and Other City Income Donuts

Become a paid member to listen to this article

NYC_income_donuts__Untapped_cities — The same map of New York made with 2010 data would probably show a lot more pink in Brooklyn and extending further up into Manhattan and probably areas of the suburbs peppered with blue.

This map series by Bill Rankin tests the “donut” hypothesis: “the idea that a city will create concentric rings of wealth and poverty, with the rich both in the suburbs and in the ‘revitalized’ downtown, and the poor stuck in between.” Rankin mapped the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the US (populations over 2,000,000). This first map of New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area reflect this pattern to a T.

Rankin notes: [The “donut” theory] does seem to have some validity in older cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but in newer cities it is not the case. Instead of donuts, one finds “wedges” of wealth occupying a continuous pie-slice from the center to the periphery. Just from visual inspection, it also seems that poverty donuts all tend to have about a five-mile radius, regardless of the size of the city. Perhaps this is the practical limit for commuting without a car?”

But these maps use data from the 2000 census and do not reflect current patterns as they are, especially since so many cities are seeing gentrification, the poor pushed to the suburbs, and such a blurring of the city-suburb line, and the proliferation of subdivisions and edge cities. Speculating about how the colors may have shifted around is what makes these maps so fun to revisit.