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Notes -
My guess is that rent control and public / subsidized housing in places like NYC make the de facto, mostly organic segregation that would normally keep groups separate and mostly invisible to one another much more visible. That is to say, my guess is (never having lived there) that I don't think NYC is much more segregated, it just looks like it because people can see the other side.
As a toy example, imagine a city laid out in a line from richest to poorest. Everyone would probably have a lot in common with their neighbours, and the racial mix would mostly change slowly across space. Now if we wrap that line into a circle, suddenly this city looks super racially segregated and inhumane where the ends meet! Anyways just a hypothesis.
Actually sun belt cities(Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix) are way less segregated than older cities in the north, mostly because they’re built more recently and have more recent mobility, both for economic reasons.
I think we might agree? I'm saying that it's rent control and public / subsidized housing that make the difference. In my vague understanding, Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix have much less of this than old metros like NYC.
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