ABSTRACT
This chapter traces changes over time: decades, centuries and in one case millennia; all involve inequality, poverty and wealth. It describes how geographical information system has been used in recent years to understand why, locally, nationally in Britain and worldwide, the bulk of the population seems destined to live in 'under-performing' regions; as they do so, more are poor, and the rich are becoming ever more separate from the rest. The local authority district of the city of Manchester stretches long and thin from north to south and so it is possible to chart a route – a journey – that covers most of it and does not look too contrived. Manchester was the first modern example of how income, poverty, wealth and inequality tend to be distributed around a city when much of the market in housing, transportation and wages is unregulated. Locally within Manchester, nationally across Britain and worldwide the spatial divisions of poverty and wealth are deepening.
