Paradise Bronx

A straight line with a few bureaucratic zigzags marks the Bronx’s northern border. That line is also the border of New York City. In general, people in the suburbs to the north of this line are richer than people in the Bronx. By some measurements, large areas of the Bronx are poorer than anywhere else in the nation. But that assumes a population frozen in time. Everybody has to start somewhere, and the poor parts of the Bronx are often where people start when they have very little. They work, and earn, and then perhaps they move upward, and new arrivals take their place. This cycle has tended to wear out some areas of the Bronx.