Rich City Poverty

We live in a time when high numbers of people within some of the richest countries in the world are living in poverty. It’s to be expected that there are different levels of wealth and privilege within every society (beyond a purely communistic one, which we’ve technically never seen in the modern period), however for this to be the case within places which are exporting their economic models and values to the rest of the world is concerning.

Beyond this, I’ve been thinking about a concept I call Rich City Poverty. How are we creating undesirable or downright shitty conditions within highly developed cities where millions of people live?

An example of Rich City Poverty might be noise. You live in the city in order to experience greater opportunity for work and culture. You want to be near a wide array of people, events, jobs, and things to see. However what this means is being more exposed to noise, traffic, car horns, the rumbles from trains, and people. A recent study in Sleep Science found that “There is also emerging evidence that the short-term effects of environmental noise, particularly when the exposure is nocturnal, may be followed by long-term adverse cardiometabolic outcomes.” By being in areas of high nocturnal noise, we are literally stressing out our bodies unconsciously, causing unintended effects that might cause series health consequences.

Another example could be travel. By building cities in the way we have, we’ve forced a good portion of workers into a position where they must travel in cars or on crowded, polluted (if underground) trains in discomfort for a good portion of their workday. I compare this experience to my average commute now on a bike, and I wonder how so many manage to put up with a long, stuffy commute.

There are plenty more examples from pollution to light to nutrition. For me, it ties heavily into cognitive biases - Confirmation Bias being the most prescient one. We know that it isn’t ideal to be both crammed together and so isolated as a community. We know it isn’t ideal to not be able to have good access to wild nature, to not be able to see the stars, to be so saturated in noise and light late into the light. But we accept it because it doesn’t feel directly changeable and it's the price to pay for living a good, exciting, activity-filled life. My pandemic experience was one long questioning of this rational, and I came out the other side with another solution.

Doubtlessly the Great Resignation, as well as what I believe will happen to London to a certain extent, a Great Migration (not just outside the country for many non-Brits, but also to nearby cities like Brighton, Margate, Bristol, and Birmingham), are both tied into this phenomenon: a realisation that what we’ve been putting up with just isn’t worth it in the end. But if it is worth it, as it is for millions of people, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be expected to change. Just as we can resist being made into rats sipping a cocaine-infused water bottle by tech companies predating on our data, are are also able to resist and campaign for a better communal city experience.

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