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This is not a great part of town, but this pocket is pretty safe. The biggest challenge for West Oakland is the lack of amenities. There is still no grocery store in an area with about 90k people. The closest store is Whole Foods 2-3 miles away, and Pack and Save a similar distance away in Emeryville.
Meanwhile, in my pocket of North Oakland, I've got 2 Safeways (#3 is currently being renovated), Whole Foods, 2 Trader Joes, 1 Full-service independent grocery, 1 full service gourmet market (it has wine store, bakery, butcher, produce stand, cheese shop and florist in one complex). Another grocery is being built (Sprouts). There is the Grocery Outlet too. And I haven't included Chinatown or Koreatown* which each have full service large format groceries and those smaller markets serving Korean, Chinese people, and Koreatown includes the "Mosque Area" that has a full service market (with halal meats) in my 2-2.5 mile radius. And "little Ethiopia" with smaller east african markets too. Not to mention year-round farmers markets 3 days a week. Talk about food deserts and income inequality.
*As an aside I absolutely loved the new Koreatown branding: there were a few banners up that said "Oakland's Got Seoul!" But people complained and said it wasn't really Koreatown and it excluded the other groups (the aforementioned Muslim community and the Ethiopian/Eritrean community). I thought it was really cute. There is like a Korean "mall" with like 8 shops, and about 7 or so Korean restaurants over a couple of blocks. With another dozen or so Arab markets, a few mosques, and other markets. But Korea town stuck for me. In college there were more Korean places, and not so many Muslim/Arab places. The Ethiopian/Eritrean places were a little bit north of the Korean places.
Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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In Albuquerque wealth is mostly concentrated in the in the North Valley along the Rio Grande and far Northeast Heights closer to the mountain foothills. It's mostly middle to upper middle class on the West Side and Rio Rancho in the northwest. Lower income areas are in the southern areas of the city mostly south of I-40 with a hodge podge of patchy areas in between.
In most of North America, the dominant winds blow from west to east.
When the early industrialists started building their factories, they built them in the east ends of cities, and built their homes in the west where they wouldn't be exposed to the pollution.
That's why the west sides of cities tend to be the historically prosperous and that the east sides tend to be more working class.
I wonder about this one. And below, Katiana gives an example of one exception. I have to think there are most likely plenty of others.
The wind here in the middle latitudes does not blow steadily out of the west the way the tropics get the northeast trade winds. In most of North America, those westerly winds carry a stream of high- and low-pressure areas across the continent. Zones of high and low pressure have winds circulating around them. The wind will shift as each system moves through. You don't get winds steadily out of the west. Instead, the wind direction varies, depending on where your local spot is in relation to the nearest high or low at the moment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
Coors Brewing is in the far western Denver suburb of Golden.
Denver is more like NY, in that it varies. In the city, the east side is definitely more affluent than the west side; north and south probably about equal. (Depends on where you divide north from south.) Some of the southern suburbs are quite wealthy; the western burbs are all over the place, from blue collar Edgewater (great pizza parlor) to the tony mountain suburbs like Evergreen and Genessee. Aurora on the east is all over the place itself, from very low income to fairly affluent. The northeast burbs are more blue-collar; the NW burbs are more middle class to upper middle, and then there's Boulder, which is considered wealthy, to the far northwest.
Most likely you find this variation in many, most, or all large cities. Though there are certain districts known for certain activities, in any city of pretty good size there's too much going on for there to be a nice neat layout where one direction or another from downtown is similar in character throughout.
Here in the Boston area, Boston itself has seen changing distributions of wealth due to gentrification, but the poorest areas several decades ago still remain so to a significant degree today. For a number of decades, the poorest large sections of Boston have been: Roxbury, which is located centrally in an east-west direction, a little south of the central city/greater downtown area; Mattapan, in the city's far southeastern corner; and East Boston, located across the harbor from downtown, to the east and northeast. There is similar scattering of blue-collar sections of the city, wealthy areas, and middle-class urban residential kinds of neighborhoods (think detached houses standing close together, with little or no yard space separating them).
That kind of economic scatter can be seen on a more local scale in Boston as well. While gentrification has caused some changes, the Dorchester section, just to the south-southeast of the central city, and Jamaica Plain, located off of the central city's southwest corner, both have long been patchwork areas, where you find poor neighborhoods, working-class and middle-class areas, and even some wealthy enclaves all scattered around in patches, sometimes just a few blocks from each other.
I've lived in the following cities throughout my life:
In alphabetical order:
Auckland
Wealthier suburbs - immediately to the east of the city. Poorest - southern suburbs (manakau)
Brisbane
Wealther suburbs:
Inner northwest and inner northeast
Poorer suburbs
Down south near Logan - halfway between Brisbane and Gold Coast
London
Wealthier suburbs
In general, west more than east and north of river more than south, inner more than outer. (having said that, I lived in north west in a poor suburb in a midway region) - wealthiest suburbs are inner northwest (around Kensington, Notting Hill etc) and inner city (city of Westminster - Belgravia/Mayfair etc)
Melbourne
East more than west inner south more than inner north although outer south and other north aren't wealthy - wealthiest suburbs are immediately to the southeast of city (eg South Yarra, Toorak etc)
Sydney
Inner East (especiallynorthern part on harbour), North Shore (although most of northern suburbs including beaches are fairly well off)
Least wealthiest suburbs - Outer west and some outer southern suburbs
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