What Income Inequality Looks Like From Space

Tim De Chant compares satellite images of neighborhoods from cities around the world to see if inequality is manifest in the patterns of the landscape. The differences are striking.

1 minute read

May 27, 2012, 1:00 PM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


Following up on an article he wrote last week about how urban trees-or the lack thereof-can reveal income inequality, De Chant compares satellite images from Google Earth that show two neighborhoods from a selection of cities around the world.

The disparities shown in cities as disparate as Rio de Janeiro, Oakland, and Beijing are astonishing. 

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