Fried Chicken Dividing Lines

Fried chicken shops are now the most important tool in demographics. If you want to know the economic health of a city's neighborhoods you can ignore census data and instead just count the number of fried chicken shops in each neighborhood. The lower the number the greater the wealth.

We have looked before, in Fried chicken vs. coffee shops and in Fast Food England, how the 'fried chicken method' can be used to determine deprived and gentrified neighborhoods in England. The method has now also been used to map out the economic divide in Sydney, Australia.

Food fault lines: mapping class through food chains looks out how fast food chains can be used to map Sydney's poorest and richest neigborhoods. At the center of this new fried chicken map of Sydney is the Red Rooster Line. The 'Red Rooster Line' is a line on the map which runs through all of Sydney's Red Rooster fast food restaurants. A line which also seems to be the border between Sydney's richer and poorer areas.

The Food Fault Lines Map also includes a number of other overlays which use different restaurant chains to create new Sydney neighborhoods. Borders have been drawn on the map around all the outlets of these different chain restaurants. The Iku Wholefood neighborhood, the Cha Time neighborhood and the Vintage Cellars suburb fall on the richer side of the Red Rooster Line. The poorer side of the Red Rooster Line is home to the Outback Steakhouse neighborhood and the borough of Wendy's.