Researchers have used Google Street View to study hundreds of elements of the built environment, including buildings, green spaces, pavements and roads, and how these elements relate to each other and influence coronary artery disease in people living in these neighborhoods.
The pictures sure make it look like bullshit.
Here’s a depressed, post-industrial area where heart disease is more common.
Here’s a suburb full of McMansions where heart disease is less common.
Gutter downspouts, masonry, bars on windows, and cracked pavement are positively correlated with heart disease and tree-lined sidewalks, big lawns and wraparound porches are negatively correlated with heart disease… go figure.
Welcome to the scientific process man: you’ve managed to deduce an obvious correlation. People also understood that living in fetid conditions led to disease for centuries before figuring out how they’re actually related (with several deeply incorrect theories along the way).
This is a way to measure that correlation and use that data for future analysis. The researchers doing this work are investigating things at a much more finite level than “duh-doy being poor is bad!!”