A new study shows how redlining, a Depression-era housing policy, contributed to inequalities that persist decades later in U.S. cities.
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
Urban neighborhoods that were redlined by federal officials in the 1930s tended to have higher levels of harmful air pollution eight decades later, a new study has found, adding to a body of evidence that reveals how racist policies in the past have contributed to inequalities across the United States today.
In the wake of the Great Depression, when the federal government graded neighborhoods in hundreds of cities for real estate investment, Black and immigrant areas were typically outlined in red on maps to denote risky places to lend. Racial discrimination in housing was outlawed in 1968. But the redlining maps entrenched discriminatory practices whose effects reverberate nearly a century later.
To this day, historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have high populations of Black, Latino and Asian residents than areas that were favorably assessed at the time.
With less green space and more paved surfaces to absorb and radiate heat, historically redlined neighborhoods are 5 degrees hotter in summer, on average, than other areas. A 2019 study of eight California cities found that residents of redlined neighborhoods were twice as likely to visit emergency rooms for asthma.
The latest study, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, looked at neighborhoods in 202 cities and their exposure to two pollutants that are harmful to human health: nitrogen dioxide, a gas associated with vehicle exhaust, industrial facilities and other sources; and the dangerous microscopic particles known as PM 2.5. The study was funded in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Joshua S. Apte, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley who worked on the study, said he had assumed the differences between neighborhoods would be more pronounced in certain regions, like the South. Instead, the patterns he and his colleagues found were remarkably consistent across the country.
“This history of racist planning is so deeply ingrained in American cities basically of any stripe, anywhere,” Dr. Apte said. “We went looking for this regional story, and it’s not there.”
