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Incredible Map Illustrates Income Inequity As Manhattan Walking Tour
By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 20, 2011
Modified Dec 20, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 20, 2011
Modified Dec 20, 2011
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You know those maps that try to convey the size of the solar system by showing the relative distances between celestial bodies—adjusted to a scale one-billionth of their size and transferred to an earthly map? (Like, if the sun is the Loews Lincoln Square IMAX, for instance, Venus would be somewhere over by the McKibben Dorms.) Well, graphic designer Kelli Anderson has produced this marvelous map illustrating income inequity using data culled from the Wall Street Journal. It's a "walking tour" of wealth disparity, which uses Zuccotti Park as the center of the map, representing the income of the average wage-earner.
Walking south from the average wage-earners at Zuccotti, you can get to the lowest income levels in just two miles. But to walk to the top of income levels, where the 1 percent—who must earn more than $493,439—is you would have to walk 19.5 miles to Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. What's really interesting, as Anderson tells Brain Pickings, is that "the income discrepancy within the levels of the top 1% are vastly greater than the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 1% of income earners. The proportions of wealth in the upper echelons of income are of a scale to which we have no comparable metaphors— the proportions are far beyond what we can see in the physical reality of our solar system."
In other words, if you wanted to walk from the 1 percent income level to the land of the top 0.1 percent, you'd have to walk from Pelham Bay Park all the way to Schenectady, New York. And the difference between the top 0.1 percent and the top 0.01 percent is the difference between Schenectady and Prince Edward Island, Canada—a vast 1,362 miles from the average wage earners in Lower Manhattan.
The map is included in the third and final edition of n+1's Occupy!, an “OWS-inspired” print gazette, which you can download for free here. [Via Runnin' Scared]
Tagged
99 percent
income inequity
occupy wall street
one percent
rich people
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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