MIT Media Lab’s new interactive “Atlas of Inequality” shows that “segregation is not just about where you live, but what you do.”

In a new map, MIT Media Lab visualizes that kind of micro-level segregation in the Boston metro region to show that “economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods,” as the researchers write on the website. “It’s part of the places you visit every day.” The map, which the MIT team hopes to expand to the 11 largest U.S. cities, is a part of ongoing research into how individual decisions and opportunities shape real-word urban issues so that “we can act and intervene in human behavior,” said Esteban Moro, the principal investigator at MIT Media Lab and an associate professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

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“Right now the way we understand segregation is at the census tract level,” Moro said. “But our decisions that are impacting segregation happen actually at much smaller level—within 25 meters.”
“Right now the way we understand segregation is at the census tract level,” Moro said. “But our decisions that are impacting segregation happen actually at much smaller level—within 25 meters.” - Here’s an example from Boston of two coffee shops (whose names have been anonymized by the researchers to protect the businesses) just across the street from each other, one of which is much more diverse than the other. © MIT Media Lab