This in today's Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/mar/02/low-traffic-schemes-benefit-most-deprived-londoners-study-finds?
based on: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q87fu/
Basically argues that there is no evidence that LTN's benefit white, wealthier communities, while sending more traffic and pollution onto bigger roads (which often form boundaries around LTNS) where black and poorer people more likely to live.
But it also shows that this is more true in Hackney and less true in Enfield. The discussion about Enfield and London more generally is probably instructive for recent hoo-has in parts of west Edinburgh:
Some of the pan-London equity is due to a failure: the failure of several more affluent and more car-dependent districts to implement anything. By contrast, less affluent districts with lower car ownership were likely both more committed to the concept of LTNs and found them politically easier to implement. Twelve districts did not introduce any LTNs between March and September 2020 (or in two cases, introduced them but removed them soon after), so no resident in any group benefited there. As such, although we have focused in this paper on demographic and socioeconomic differences, arguably the largest inequality in London at the city level is the postcode lottery between districts. Among those districts that did introduce measures, we found that the ‘typical’ district was more likely to introduce LTNs in its more deprived areas but was also slightly more likely to favour its White residents. Both effects are relatively small, however, and mask very considerable variation between districts in both respects.
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