*A recent study from The Urban Institute found that Pokémon GO sends its users in Washington D.C. to primarily white neighborhoods.
The free app taps into a user’s GPS to find Pokémon, Pokécenters, and other digital landmarks at points located on a map. The user must actually walk to the real-world points to access the landmarks.
The study, which was profiled in The Washington Post, finds that there are generally about 60 Pokémon GO landmarks in an average predominantly white D.C. neighborhood, while there are only about 25 in a predominantly black neighborhood.
#PokémonGO is changing how cities use public space, but could it be more inclusive? https://t.co/5g3AKBFWhL pic.twitter.com/5JghlA9osK
— Urban Institute (@urbaninstitute) August 2, 2016
Meanwhile, Rise News recently reported on how Pokémon GO seems to be “kind of racist” in Memphis, Tennessee as well, with the game’s Pokéstops and even the Pokémon themselves located in the areas of town where the roads are better and where the shops are clustered more closely together, which occur more frequently in white neighborhoods in most cities.
Read more about the DC study at The Washington Post. The Memphis observations from writer Courtney Anderson may be read in full at Rise News.
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