Map of the Day: The Donut Hypothesis

Radical Cartography has launched another interesting comparative maps project called City Income Donuts:

These maps show the distribution of income (per capita) around the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the US (all those with population greater than 2,000,000). The goal was to test 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.

This 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.

NYC certainly does have some ringage: very rich people at the center in Manhattan, then poor people out in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and then rich people again in Westchester, Long Island, and Jersey. Interesting! [Via the JK.]