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This study evaluates the impact of a policy popularly known as "redlining" on marriage. This policy led to the creation of a series of maps that guided banks in their lending, where some areas were favored and others were discriminated against. Given the quasi-randomness of mortgage discrimination, this policy allows us to make inferences regarding whether housing credit constraints affect marriage. Furthermore, it also provides insight into whether unequal access to housing credit played a role in the contemporary racial marriage gap. This policy allows us to make these inferences due to the fact that neighborhood blocks that were more heavily discriminated against had higher proportions of Black residents. The study uses a spatial differences in discontinuities design to show that the maps led to a reduction in marriage in discriminated areas. These effects are shown to not be due to sorting. They can also be ascribed to the housing credit mechanism per se, rather than competing second-order mechanisms that result from individuals being denied mortgages. These second-order effects can include, for instance, neighborhood decline effects found in other redlining work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racist public policies in the US, like redlining, segregated many communities of color to resource poor and impoverished areas, and codified how resources were distributed to communities based on race. Redlining, a historic discriminatory housing policy used to value city neighborhoods by race has codified segregation in cities today. Research has shown how the practice of redlining has shaped the economic and social fabric of modern U.S. cities, but only recently have researchers explored how these discriminatory policies have influenced the ecology in cities. Here, we used camera trap data collected in the Washington, D.C. region to assess if historic redlining impacts medium-sized mammal diversity in present day. We found no significant difference in species richness or community composition among historic neighborhood classifications. We did find that urbanization alone had a significant negative correlation with the persistence of raccoon and occupancy of Virginia opossum, but these variables did not vary significantly between housing classifications for any species. Our study adds to a growing body of knowledge on how historic land use decisions affect biodiversity in cities, allowing managers to better understand where conservation and habitat improvements should be made to reduce nature inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Identifying the root causes of racial disparities in childhood asthma is critical for health equity. Objectives: To determine whether the racist policy of redlining in the 1930s led to present-day disparities in childhood asthma by increasing community-level poverty and decreasing neighborhood socioeconomic position (SEP). Methods: We categorized census tracts at the birth address of participants from the Children's Respiratory and Environmental Workgroup birth cohort consortium into categories A, B, C, and D as defined by the Home Owners Loan Corporation, with D being the highest perceived risk. Surrogates of present-day neighborhood-level SEP were determined for each tract, including the percentage of low-income households, the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index, and other tract-level variables. We performed causal mediation analysis, which, under the assumption of no unmeasured confounding, estimates the direct and mediated pathways by which redlining may cause asthma disparities through tract-level mediators adjusting for individual-level covariates. Measurements and Main Results: Of 4,849 children, the cumulative incidence of asthma through age 11 was 26.6%, and 13.2% resided in census tracts with a Home Owners Loan Corporation grade of D. In mediation analyses, residing in Grade-D tracts (adjusted odds ratio = 1.03 [95% confidence interval = 1.01, 1.05]) was significantly associated with childhood asthma, with 79% of this increased risk mediated by percentage of low-income households; results were similar for the Social Vulnerability Index and other tract-level variables. Conclusions: The historical structural racist policy of redlining led to present-day asthma disparities in part through decreased neighborhood SEP. Policies aimed at reversing the effects of structural racism should be considered to create more just, equitable, and healthy communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widely acknowledged rating system of the Federal Homeowners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a relative measure of pre-1940 racist practices in residential real estate activities in large United States central cities. It was not an assessment that guided HOLC or later Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage lending practices. The research question examined here is whether a similar home in different HOLC-rated neighborhoods in the City of Sacramento (California) sold for a different price eight decades after receiving its HOLC grade. A hedonic regression result shows that homes in the two forms of lower-rated neighborhoods sold for about 13% less than those in the two forms of higher-rated neighborhoods. A Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition breaks down the average selling price difference of $195,000 between a home sold in HOLC green/blue compared to yellow/red rated neighborhoods. A third of this difference in home prices, which is not due to home characteristics, represents a starting measure of the legacy of discriminatory housing practices. The remaining two-thirds of the difference could be due to variations in current home characteristics also influenced by Pre-1940s discriminatory housing practices. These findings are relevant to understanding the contribution of past structural racism in the housing market to present inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement Over half of Earth's human population lives in urban areas where pollution from fossil fuel combustion threatens urban air quality and public health. The isotopic composition of plant tissues can be used as a tool to estimate local variation in the amount of fossil fuel–derived carbon dioxide. We present a case study that examines this variation against the backdrop of historic discriminatory policies in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. Data suggest higher loads of atmospheric fossil carbon in neighborhood greenspaces that are situated closer to large roads, which often correspond with historical policies. Evidence of unequal fossil fuel combustion, and potentially pollution load, may precipitate changes in urban management or pollution mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the impact of historical redlining on the risk of pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes in Massachusetts (MA) from 1995 to 2015. Methods: In total, 288,787 pregnant people from the MA Birth Registry had information on parental characteristics, pregnancy factors, and redlining data at parental residences at the time of delivery. Historic redlining data were based on MA Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) security maps, with grades assigned (A "best," B "still desirable," C "definitely declining," and D "hazardous"). We used covariate-adjusted binomial regression models to examine associations between HOLC grade and each chronic condition and pregnancy/birth outcome. Results: Living in HOLC grades B through D compared with A was associated with an increased risk of entering pregnancy with chronic conditions and adverse pregnancy/birth outcomes. The strongest associations were seen with pregestational diabetes (adjusted risk ratio [RR] Grade D: 1.7, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.3, 2.4) and chronic hypertension (adjusted RR Grade D: 1.5, 95% CI: 1.1, 1.9). Conclusions: Historical redlining policies from the 1930s were associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and chronic conditions; associations were strongest for chronic conditions in pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates students' engagement with a historical inquiry into redlining—a practice of discriminatory lending that originated in the 1930s as part of the New Deal. The authors developed and implemented a week-long curricular intervention for high school sophomores using StoryQ—an Artificial Intelligence (AI) textual modeling platform designed for high school students without technical expertise—to examine hundreds of neighborhood descriptions produced for the Home Owners Loan Corporation's "residential security maps" in the late 1930s. In this article, we ask: What kinds of historical and present-day racial awareness do high school students demonstrate through instruction focused on AI-assisted analysis of patterns in redlining? Analyzing field notes, interviews, and student-generated digital work showed that many students were drawn to structural explanations of racism and worked to unpack the way primary sources presented Whiteness through "coded language." We argue that it is not only possible for teachers to construct historical inquiries that aim to identify patterns in a large set of primary sources with the aid of AI, but this approach to inquiry offers students an important avenue to engage with alternatives to individual conceptions of racial oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pittsburgh has changed considerably since deindustrialization, with a shift in industry from steel to medicine and from public to private infrastructure. Segregation patterns form in response to the economic statuses within a region. Exclusionary zoning codes have shaped segregation patterns in Pittsburgh. As these zones become increasingly obsolete with the decline of the steel industry and the subsequent rise in the white-collar economy, the potential for these zones to change increases. This study uses the Dissimilarity Index to measure changes in segregation levels in Pittsburgh’s twenty most segregated neighborhoods as measured in 1970, to 2020. Segregation levels have decreased in all neighborhoods evaluated except one. This reveals that overall, Pittsburgh is desegregating. The results of this study also indicate the effects of private infrastructure, decreasing population, and areas of concentrated poverty on the demographics of a city.

This is the story of a mapping exhibit that unfolded during COVID at a large, urban community college in Dayton, Ohio. The culmination of a six-month collaboration between geography/GIS students and faculty and the planning committee of Sinclair's annual Summit, this exhibit Vestiges of Redlining: Mapping Equity in Dayton, Ohio promoted community conversations that focused on visualizing 'what is' and on exploring 'what ought to be'. This paper frames the exhibit through the lens of public and community geographies and discusses the necessary collaborations that created the exhibit, promoted the exhibit in public facing spaces, and spurred social action and new partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecologists often leverage contributory science, also referred to as citizen science, to answer large-scale spatial and temporal biodiversity questions. Contributory science platforms, such as eBird and iNaturalist, provide researchers with incredibly fine-scale data to track biodiversity. However, data generated by these platforms are spatially biased. Research has shown that factors like income, race, and historical redlining can influence spatial patterns of reported eBird and iNaturalist data. However, the role of contemporary residential segregation remains unclear. Additionally, we do not understand how these variables potentially relate to certain Census tracts having more or less biodiversity data than you would expect based on size or population density. To further understand the social factors that may contribute to spatial biases in eBird and iNaturalist data, we focused on three cities within the USA (Oakland, California; St. Louis, Missouri; and Baltimore, Maryland). We specifically investigated how income, race, segregation, and redlining via Home Owners' Loan Corporation grades (grades A = best, B, C, and D = hazardous and "redlined") are associated with the difference between reported and expected observations based on area and human population density. We find that census tracts with higher income and more White people generally have more observations than expected. We only find segregation to influence differences in reported and expected observations in Baltimore, with more segregated Census tracts having more observations than expected. Lastly, we find that grades C and D consistently have fewer data than expected compared with grades A and B for both platforms in each city. Our results show that although each city has distinct societal and ecological features, societal inequity permeates each city to shape the uptake of data for two of the largest sources of biodiversity data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical structural racism in the built environment contributes to health inequities, yet to date, research has almost exclusively focused on racist policy of redlining. We expand upon this conceptualization of historical structural racism by examining the potential associations of probable blockbusting, urban renewal, and proximity to displacement from freeway construction, along with redlining, to multiple contemporary health measures. Analyses linked historical structural racism, measured continuously at the census-tract level using archival data sources, to present-day residents' physical health measures drawn from publicly accessible records for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Outcome measures included average life expectancy and the percentage of residents reporting hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, smoking, insufficient sleep, sedentary behavior, and no health insurance coverage. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine separate and additive associations between structural racism and physical health measures. Redlining, probable blockbusting, and urban renewal were associated with shorter life expectancy and a higher prevalence of cardiovascular conditions, risky health behaviors, and residents lacking health insurance coverage. Probable blockbusting and urban renewal had the most consistent correlations with all 8 health measures, while freeway displacement was not reliably associated with health. Additive models explained a greater proportion of variance in health than any individual structural racism measure alone. Moreover, probable blockbusting and urban renewal accounted for relatively more variance in health compared to redlining, suggesting that research should consider these other measures in addition to redlining. These preliminary correlational findings underscore the importance of considering multiple aspects of historical structural racism in relation to current health inequities and serve as a starting point for additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial residential segregation has been deemed a fundamental cause of health inequities. It is a result of historical and contemporary policies such as redlining that have created a geographic separation of races and corresponds with an inequitable distribution of health-promoting resources. Redlining and racial residential segregation may have contributed to racial inequities in COVID-19 vaccine administration in the early stages of public accessibility. We use data from the National Archives (historical redlining), Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (contemporary redlining), American Community Survey from 1940 (historical racial residential segregation) and 2015–2019 (contemporary racial residential segregation), and Washington D.C. government (COVID-19 vaccination administration) to assess the relationships between redlining, racial residential segregation, and COVID-19 vaccine administration during the early stages of vaccine distribution when a tiered system was in place due to limited supply. Pearson correlation was used to assess whether redlining and racial segregation, measured both historically and contemporarily, were correlated with each other in Washington D.C. Subsequently, linear regression was used to assess whether each of these measures associate with COVID-19 vaccine administration. In both historical and contemporary analyses, there was a positive correlation between redlining and racial residential segregation. Further, redlining and racial residential segregation were each positively associated with administration of the novel COVID-19 vaccine. This study highlights the ongoing ways in which redlining and segregation contribute to racial health inequities. Eliminating racial health inequities in American society requires addressing the root causes that affect access to health-promoting resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapidly expanding body of research has sought to connect the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's (HOLC) so-called redlining maps to a wide array of present-day social injustices. The assertion is that these maps helped entrench emerging cogeographies of racial segregation and devaluation that have continued to reproduce racial-spatial inequities through time. We argue that such arguments likely underestimate the ongoing power of racism by narrowly focusing on the map grades rather than on racial segregation itself. To investigate this possibility, we conduct a set of statistical analyses that decouple race from redlining. These analyses produce two main findings. First, postwar Black population growth did not occur in all HOLC redlined neighborhoods evenly but was most concentrated in those areas that either had an initial Black population or that were adjacent to them. Second, whereas HOLC grade was a stronger predictor of neighborhood home values than Black population share until about 1970, the latter has become the more salient factor since. Thus, rather than obliquely highlighting the persistent geographies of racialized devaluation by way of the HOLC grades, researchers should instead focus on the racially uneven geographies of value directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the legacies of historical redlining has lacked nationally representative and multilevel data. We advance this literature by analyzing new data that links historical redlining maps to the residential addresses of participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a diverse and national cohort of adolescents who transitioned to adulthood between the mid-1990s and late 2010s (N = 10,897). We report three key findings. First, while most participants did not live within the boundaries of historical redlining maps, Black (22%) and Hispanic (28%) participants were several times more likely than their White peers (8%) to live in either a formerly yellow- or red-lined urban area in adolescence. Second, adolescents who resided in yellow- or red-lined areas also tended to live in the most disadvantaged households and neighborhoods and attained the lowest levels of socioeconomic status in adulthood. Third, Black and White adolescents who lived in rural areas also experienced similar or worse adult outcomes than their peers who lived in redlined urban areas. We also find anomalous but inconclusive patterns for the small group of Black and Hispanic participants who lived in historically affluent “green-lined” areas in adolescence, including poor adult health and high risk of contact with the criminal justice system. Given these findings, we outline avenues for future research that could include historical redlining maps, but also expand beyond urban redlining to consider nonmetropolitan areas and other contemporary indicators of structural racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadband is not equally accessible among students despite its increasing importance to education. We investigate the relationship between broadband and housing policy by joining two measures of broadband access with Depression-era redlining maps that classified neighborhoods based in part on racist and classist beliefs. We find that despite internet service provider self-reports of similar technological availability, broadband access generally decreases in tandem with historic neighborhood classification, with further heterogeneity by race/ethnicity and income. Our findings demonstrate how past federally-developed housing policies connect to the digital divide and should be considered in educational policies that require broadband for success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By describing how the federal urban renewal program harmed displaced tenants and property owners, this article intends to encourage discussion of potential remedies by study groups, commissions, and community activists. In addition to loss of property, these harms include inadequate reimbursement payments, diminished business and rental income, and higher post-relocation housing costs. Using Kingston and Newburgh, New York, and Asheville, North Carolina, as case studies, the article demonstrates how researchers can document the need for reparative justice policies using historical data drawn from local archival collections.

Legacy effects describe the persistent, long-term impacts on an ecosystem following the removal of an abiotic or biotic feature. Redlining, a policy that codified racial segregation and disinvestment in minoritized neighborhoods, has produced legacy effects with profound impacts on urban ecosystem structure and health. These legacies have detrimentally impacted public health outcomes, socioeconomic stability, and environmental health. However, the collateral impacts of redlining on wildlife communities are uncertain. Here, we investigated whether faunal biodiversity was associated with redlining. We used home-owner loan corporation (HOLC) maps [grades A (i.e., "best" and "greenlined"), B, C, and D (i.e., "hazardous" and "redlined")] across four cities in California and contributory science data (iNaturalist) to estimate alpha and beta diversity across six clades (mammals, birds, insects, arachnids, reptiles, and amphibians) as a function of HOLC grade. We found that in greenlined neighborhoods, unique species were detected with less sampling effort, with redlined neighborhoods needing over 8,000 observations to detect the same number of unique species. Historically redlined neighborhoods had lower native and nonnative species richness compared to greenlined neighborhoods across each city, with disparities remaining at the clade level. Further, community composition (i.e., beta diversity) consistently differed among HOLC grades for all cities, including large differences in species assemblage observed between green and redlined neighborhoods. Our work spotlights the lasting effects of social injustices on the community ecology of cities, emphasizing that urban conservation and management efforts must incorporate an antiracist, justice-informed lens to improve biodiversity in urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities worldwide are grappling with complex urban environmental injustices. While environmental justice as a concept has gained prominence in both academia and policy, operationalizing and implementing environmental justice principles and norms remains underexplored. Notably, less attention has been given to centering the perspectives and experiences of community-based actors operating at the grassroots level, who can inform and strengthen urban environmental justice practice. Through ethnographic, participant-as-observer methods, interviews, and geovisualizations, this study explores the perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and practices of community-based urban forest stewards in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (United States) who are invested in addressing environmental injustices through urban tree-planting and stewardship. Interviewees were asked how they were addressing issues of distribution, procedure, and recognition in urban forest planning and practice, as well as the socio-political and institutional factors that have influenced their perspectives and practices. Particular attention is given to how urban forest stewards implement recognitional justice principles. Findings from this study exposed several complex socio-political challenges affecting steward engagement in community-led tree initiatives and the broader pursuit of environmental justice, including discriminatory urban planning practices, gentrification concerns, underrepresentation of Black and Latinx voices in decision-making, volunteer-based tree-planting models, and tree life cycle costs. Nevertheless, urban forest stewards remain dedicated to collective community-building to address environmental injustices and stress the importance of recognizing, listening to, dialoguing with, and validating the perspectives and experiences of their neighbors as essential to their process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of historic residential redlining on health inequities is intertwined with policy changes made before and after the 1930s that influence current neighborhood characteristics and shape ongoing structural racism in the United States (U.S.). We developed Neighborhood Trajectories which combine historic redlining data and the current neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics as a novel approach to studying structural racism. Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) neighborhoods for the entire U.S. were used to map the HOLC grades to the 2020 U.S. Census block group polygons based on the percentage of HOLC areas in each block group. Each block group was also assigned an Area Deprivation Index (ADI) from the Neighborhood Atlas®. To evaluate changes in neighborhoods from historic HOLC grades to present degree of deprivation, we aggregated block groups into "Neighborhood Trajectories" using historic HOLC grades and current ADI. The Neighborhood Trajectories are "Advantage Stable"; "Advantage Reduced"; "Disadvantage Reduced"; and "Disadvantage Stable." Neighborhood Trajectories were established for 13.3% (32,152) of the block groups in the U.S., encompassing 38,005,799 people. Overall, the Disadvantage-Reduced trajectory had the largest population (16,307,217 people). However, the largest percentage of non-Hispanic/Latino Black residents (34%) fell in the Advantage-Reduced trajectory, while the largest percentage of Non-Hispanic/Latino White residents (60%) fell in the Advantage-Stable trajectory. The development of the Neighborhood Trajectories affords a more nuanced mechanism to investigate dynamic processes from historic policy, socioeconomic development, and ongoing marginalization. This adaptable methodology may enable investigation of ongoing sociopolitical processes including gentrification of neighborhoods (Disadvantage-Reduced trajectory) and "White flight" (Advantage Reduced trajectory). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built environment anchors social, economic, and political community. A limited neighbourhood milieu fosters and maintains relationships that enable a community to realize its values. Fundamental civic activities such as getting out the vote depend on this empowerment. Voting has declined across New York City, but especially in the Bronx, which experienced the largest decline in voting between the 1969 and 2021 mayoral elections. The South and Central Bronx is now the largest city area of extremely low voter participation. This paper explores how public policies generated by the real estate industry – specifically redlining, urban renewal, and planned shrinkage – in conjunction with the Permanent Registration article in the 1938 New York State Constitution suppressed voting. The distribution of premature mortality and other health problems in the Bronx appear to be another consequence of these policies. That is, disempowerment and health erosion appear related and stem from influence of the real estate industry on mayoral policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the lasting effects of redlining in the United States on wealth creation and economic opportunity. Due to rising mortgage rates and low supply, housing costs are growing. Redlining is the practice of discrimination in the homebuying and lending market that resulted in significant housing inequality. While illegal since the 1970s, redlining has not disappeared but rather evolved. Institutional economics provides a framework to understand the history, consequences, and solutions to modern redlining that can generate greater housing equality in the United States. This article uses the latest Federal Reserve Bank's Survey of Consumer Finances (2023) data to analyze the size and effects of housing inequality resulting from redlining practices and what groups are most affected. From these empirical findings, public policy solutions are presented to create a more financially stable and equitable housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By describing how the federal urban renewal program harmed displaced tenants and property owners, this article intends to encourage discussion of potential remedies by study groups, commissions, and community activists. In addition to loss of property, these harms include inadequate reimbursement payments, diminished business and rental income, and higher post-relocation housing costs. Using Kingston and Newburgh, New York, and Asheville, North Carolina, as case studies, the article demonstrates how researchers can document the need for reparative justice policies using historical data drawn from local archival collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhood characteristics including housing status can profoundly influence health. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to present-day impacts of "redlining," or historic area classifications that indicated less desirable (redlined) areas subject to decreased investment. Scholarship of redlining and health is emerging; limited guidance exists regarding optimal approaches to measuring historic redlining in studies of present-day health outcomes. We evaluated how different redlining approaches (map alignment methods) influence associations between redlining and health outcomes. We first identified 11 existing redlining map alignment methods and their 37 logical extensions, then merged these 48 map alignment methods with census tract life expectancy data to construct 9696 linear models of each method and life expectancy for all 202 redlined cities. We evaluated each model's statistical significance and R2 values and compared changes between historical and contemporary geographies and populations using Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE). RMSE peaked with a normal distribution at 0.175, indicating persistent difference between historical and contemporary geographies and populations. Continuous methods with low thresholds provided higher neighborhood coverage. Weighting methods had more significant associations, while high threshold methods had higher R2 values. In light of these findings, we recommend continuous methods that consider contemporary population distributions and mapping overlap for studies of redlining and health. We developed an R application {holcmapr} to enable map alignment method comparison and easier method selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Redlining has been associated with worse health outcomes and various environmental disparities, separately, but little is known of the interaction between these two factors, if any. We aimed to estimate whether living in a historically-redlined area modifies the effects of exposures to ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat on mortality by non-external causes. Methods We merged 8,884,733 adult mortality records from thirteen state departments of public health with scanned and georeferenced Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps from the University of Richmond, daily average PM2.5 from a sophisticated prediction model on a 1-km grid, and daily temperature and vapor pressure from the Daymet V4 1-km grid. A case-crossover approach was used to assess modification of the effects of ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat exposures by redlining and control for all fixed and slow-varying factors by design. Multiple moving averages of PM2.5 and duration-aware analyses of extreme heat were used to assess the most vulnerable time windows. Results We found significant statistical interactions between living in a redlined area and exposures to both ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat. Individuals who lived in redlined areas had an interaction odds ratio for mortality of 1.0093 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.0084, 1.0101) for each 10 µg m−3 increase in same-day ambient PM2.5 compared to individuals who did not live in redlined areas. For extreme heat, the interaction odds ratio was 1.0218 (95% CI 1.0031, 1.0408). Conclusions Living in areas that were historically-redlined in the 1930’s increases the effects of exposures to both PM2.5 and extreme heat on mortality by non-external causes, suggesting that interventions to reduce environmental health disparities can be more effective by also considering the social context of an area and how to reduce disparities there. Further study is required to ascertain the specific pathways through which this effect modification operates and to develop interventions that can contribute to health equity for individuals living in these areas.

Background: We sought to determine the impact of historical redlining on travel patterns and utilization of high-volume hospitals (HVHs) among patients undergoing complex cancer operations. Methods: The California Department of Health Care Access and Information database was utilized to identify patients who underwent esophagectomy (ES), pneumonectomy (PN), pancreatectomy (PA), or proctectomy (PR) for cancer between 2010 and 2020. Patient ZIP codes were assigned Home Owners' Loan Corporation grades (A: 'Best'; B: 'Still Desirable'; C: 'Definitely Declining'; and D: 'Hazardous/Redlined'). A clustered multivariable regression was used to assess the likelihood of patients undergoing surgery at an HVH, bypassing the nearest HVH, and total real driving time and travel distance. Results: Among 14,944 patients undergoing high-risk cancer surgery (ES: 4.7%, n = 1216; PN: 57.8%, n = 8643; PD: 14.4%, n = 2154; PR: 23.1%, n = 3452), 782 (5.2%) individuals resided in the 'Best', whereas 3393 (22.7%) individuals resided in redlined areas. Median travel distance was 7.8 miles (interquartile range [IQR] 4.1–14.4) and travel time was 16.1 min (IQR 10.7–25.8). Overall, 10,763 (ES: 17.4%; PN: 76.0%; PA: 63.5%; PR: 78.4%) patients underwent surgery at an HVH. On multivariable regression, patients residing in redlined areas were less likely to undergo surgery at an HVH (odds ratio [OR] 0.67, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.54–0.82) and were more likely to bypass the nearest hospital (OR 1.80, 95% CI 1.44–2.46). Notably, Medicaid insurance, minority status, limited English-language proficiency, and educational level mediated the disparities in access to HVH. Conclusion: Surgical disparities in access to HVH among patients from historically redlined areas are largely mediated by social determinants such as insurance and minority status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redlining refers to discriminatory lending practices based on the demographic composition of neighborhoods. The term is often attributed to boundaries drawn on maps by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s to represent the perceived credit risk of neighborhoods. Combined with other discriminatory actions, redlining restricted access to mortgage financing for racial minorities, and areas subject to historic redlining practices still exhibit worse outcomes on various socio‐economic dimensions. This study examines contemporary differences in residential housing values along historic redlined boundaries. Boundary fixed effects models are constructed using contemporary property sale data for Seattle, WA and Richmond, VA from 2000 to 2018. Results indicate that properties inside a redlined boundary continue to sell at significantly discounted prices compared to houses across the redlined border. Further investigation, using historic data from the 1930s and 1940s, finds that there was also a large and significant historic difference in housing values across the redlined boundaries at that time, including before the advent of HOLC maps. This suggests that contemporary differences in housing values are likely not a direct effect of HOLC maps but rather depict the lingering effect of broader redlining and discriminatory practices that existed before the advent of these maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Redlining has been associated with worse health outcomes and various environmental disparities, separately, but little is known of the interaction between these two factors, if any. We aimed to estimate whether living in a historically-redlined area modifies the effects of exposures to ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat on mortality by non-external causes. Methods: We merged 8,884,733 adult mortality records from thirteen state departments of public health with scanned and georeferenced Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps from the University of Richmond, daily average PM2.5 from a sophisticated prediction model on a 1-km grid, and daily temperature and vapor pressure from the Daymet V4 1-km grid. A case-crossover approach was used to assess modification of the effects of ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat exposures by redlining and control for all fixed and slow-varying factors by design. Multiple moving averages of PM2.5 and duration-aware analyses of extreme heat were used to assess the most vulnerable time windows. Results: We found significant statistical interactions between living in a redlined area and exposures to both ambient PM2.5 and extreme heat. Individuals who lived in redlined areas had an interaction odds ratio for mortality of 1.0093 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.0084, 1.0101) for each 10 µg m−3 increase in same-day ambient PM2.5 compared to individuals who did not live in redlined areas. For extreme heat, the interaction odds ratio was 1.0218 (95% CI 1.0031, 1.0408). Conclusions: Living in areas that were historically-redlined in the 1930's increases the effects of exposures to both PM2.5 and extreme heat on mortality by non-external causes, suggesting that interventions to reduce environmental health disparities can be more effective by also considering the social context of an area and how to reduce disparities there. Further study is required to ascertain the specific pathways through which this effect modification operates and to develop interventions that can contribute to health equity for individuals living in these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's (HOLC) so-called 'redlining' maps have gone from a niche corner of urban historical scholarship to the centre of mainstream narratives about racism in the United States. In this paper, I map this journey and trace the contours of the ongoing debates that have emerged, identifying two competing camps I call 'HOLC Culpablism' and 'HOLC Scepticism'. Finding these perspectives to have run up against their self-imposed limitations, I outline a research agenda that breaks from the debate's narrow confines by envisioning HOLC's mapping materials anew. My proposed approach recasts the maps and their accompanying field notes as windows into the governing racial–spatial ideology of 20th-century US real estate capital. In doing so, it invites researchers to reimagine the map grades as dynamic categories reflecting a particular spatiotemporal conception of value that is highly contingent on an area's estimated racial trajectory. This reformulation, I argue, not only opens new possibilities for studying the HOLC mapping programme but suggests that the power of these maps has almost certainly been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-term impacts of the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) mortgage risk assessment maps on the spatial dynamics of recent income and racial distributions in California metropolitan areas over the 1990-2010 period. We combine historical HOLC boundaries with modern Census tract data and apply recently developed methods of spatial distribution dynamics to examine if legacy impacts are reflected in recent urban dynamics. Cities with HOLC assessments are found to have higher levels of isolation segregation than the non-HOLC group, but no difference in unevenness segregation between the two groups of cities are found. We find no difference in income or racial and ethnic distributional dynamics between the two groups of cities over the period. At the intra-urban scale, we find that the intersectionality of residing in a C or D graded tract that is also a low-income tract falls predominately upon the minority populations in these eight HOLC cities. Our findings indicate that neighborhoods with poor housing markets and high minority concentrations rarely experience a dramatic change in either their racial and ethnic or socioeconomic compositions—and that negative externalities (e.g. lower home prices and greater segregation levels) emanate from these neighborhoods, with inertia spilling over into nearby zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Historical maps of racialized evaluation of mortgage lending risk (i.e., redlined neighborhoods) have been linked to adverse health outcomes. Little research has examined whether living in historically redlined neighborhoods is associated with obesity, differentially by race or gender. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study to examine whether living in historically redlined neighborhoods is associated with BMI and waist circumference among Black and White adults in 1985–1986. Participants’ addresses were linked to the 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps that evaluated mortgage lending risk across neighborhoods. The authors used multilevel linear regression models clustered on Census tract, adjusted for confounders to estimate main effects, and stratified, and interaction models by (1) race, (2) gender, and (3) race by gender with redlining differentially for Black versus White adults and men versus women. To better understand strata differences, they compared Census tract–level median household income across race and gender groups within Home Owners’ Loan Corporation grade. Results: Black adults (n=2,103) were more likely than White adults (n=1,767) to live in historically rated hazardous areas and to have higher BMI and waist circumference. Redlining and race and redlining and gender interactions for BMI and waist circumference were statistically significant (p

BackgroundThis study examines the lasting impact of historical redlining on contemporary neurosurgical care access, highlighting the need for equitable healthcare in historically marginalized communities.ObjectiveTo investigate how redlining affects neurosurgeon distribution and reimbursement in U.S. neighborhoods, analyzing implications for healthcare access.MethodsAn observational study was conducted using data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) National File, Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) neighborhood grades, and demographic data to evaluate neurosurgical representation across 91 U.S. cities, categorized by HOLC Grades (A, B, C, D) and gentrification status.ResultsOf the 257 neighborhoods, Grade A, B, C, and D neighborhoods comprised 5.40%, 18.80%, 45.8%, and 30.0% of the sample, respectively. Grade A, B, and C neighborhoods had more White and Asian residents and less Black residents compared to Grade D neighborhoods (p

Ecologists often leverage contributory science, also referred to as citizen science, to answer large-scale spatial and temporal biodiversity questions. Contributory science platforms, such as eBird and iNaturalist, provide researchers with incredibly fine-scale data to track biodiversity. However, data generated by these platforms are spatially biased. Research has shown that factors like income, race, and historical redlining can influence spatial patterns of reported eBird and iNaturalist data. However, the role of contemporary residential segregation remains unclear. Additionally, we do not understand how these variables potentially relate to certain Census tracts having more or less biodiversity data than you would expect based on size or population density. To further understand the social factors that may contribute to spatial biases in eBird and iNaturalist data, we focused on three cities within the USA (Oakland, California; St. Louis, Missouri; and Baltimore, Maryland). We specifically investigated how income, race, segregation, and redlining via Home Owners’ Loan Corporation grades (grades A = best, B, C, and D = hazardous and “redlined”) are associated with the difference between reported and expected observations based on area and human population density. We find that census tracts with higher income and more White people generally have more observations than expected. We only find segregation to influence differences in reported and expected observations in Baltimore, with more segregated Census tracts having more observations than expected. Lastly, we find that grades C and D consistently have fewer data than expected compared with grades A and B for both platforms in each city. Our results show that although each city has distinct societal and ecological features, societal inequity permeates each city to shape the uptake of data for two of the largest sources of biodiversity data.

The United States government sponsored the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s to assess and grade neighborhoods based on perceived financial risk. The grades were influenced by the presence of minority racial groups, immigrants, and residents with lower socioeconomic statuses and, even though the practice was eventually outlawed, the impact on low income and underrepresented minorities is still prevalent today. This study was designed to assess spatial patterns and intensity of flood risk to (a) HOLC grade, (b) proximity to coastal zones, (c) intensity of vegetative cover, and (d) relationship to buried (ghost) streams and wetlands to determine which variable has the most impact on flood risk. Flood risk data, acquired from First Street Foundation’s Flood Factor dataset, was summarized by HOLC grade, and ghost streams and wetlands were digitized from historical maps and aggregated by HOLC grade. The results show flood risk is higher in C and D graded neighborhoods, compared to A and B. Regardless of HOLC grade, neighborhoods near the Detroit River and Lake St. Claire have 10 times higher flood risk than inland neighborhoods. Interestingly, B-graded neighborhoods exhibit minimal impact from buried rivers and wetlands, but that risk increases substantially if there is a history of stream or wetland burial within a D graded neighborhood. Flood risk is disproportionately distributed, caused in part by outlawed, racist housing policies. Understanding where risk is highest can help identify optimum locations for adaptation measures to minimize flood damage in these neighborhoods.

Previous research on the long-term effects of redlining in the United States has found that areas receiving a D grade have lower homeownership rates and home values as well as declines in population density. Here, we focus on the heterogeneity of such impacts. Using Home Owners’ Loan Corporation descriptive data, we categorize D-graded neighborhoods according to initial population composition. We then compare neighborhood outcomes over time and across regions. We find that receiving a D grade is not a universal predictor of either lower homeownership rates or increased racial segregation. D-graded areas that only noted immigrant populations did not have lower homeownership rates or higher black populations by 2000 than C-graded neighborhoods. These results point to the fact that redlining was interacting with localized trends of discrimination and residential mobility, rather than redlining causing differential trajectories in neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Examine the association between historic residential redlining and present-day racial/ethnic composition of neighborhoods, racial/ethnic differences in social determinant of health domains, and risk of home evictions and food insecurity. Research Design and Methods: We examined data on 12,334 (for eviction sample), and 8996 (for food insecurity sample), census tracts in 213 counties across 37 states in the USA with data on exposure to historic redlining. First, we examined relationships between Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining grades (A="Best", B="Still Desirable", C="Definitely Declining", D="Hazardous") and present-day racial/ethnic composition and racial/ethnic differences in social determinant of health domains of neighborhoods. Second, we examined whether historic redlining is associated with present-day home eviction rates (measured across eviction filings rates, and eviction judgment rates for 12,334 census tracts in 2018) and food insecurity (measured across low supermarket access, low supermarket access and income, low supermarket access and low car ownership for 8996 census tracts in 2019). Multivariable regression models were adjusted for census tract population, urban/rural designation, and county level fixed effects. Results: Relative to areas with a historic HOLC grading of "A (Best)", areas with a "D (Hazardous)" grading had a 2.59 (95%CI=1.99–3.19; p-value<0.01) higher rate of eviction filings, and a 1.03 (95%CI=0.80–1.27; p-value<0.01) higher rate of eviction judgments. Compared to areas with a historic HOLC grading of "A (Best)", areas rated with a "D (Hazardous)" had a 16.20 (95%CI=15.02–17.79; p-value<0.01) higher rate of food insecurity based on supermarket access and income, and a 6.15 (95%CI =5.53–6.76; p-value<0.01) higher rate of food insecurity based on supermarket access and car ownership. Conclusions: Historic residential redlining is significantly associated with present-day home evictions and food insecurity, highlighting persistent associations between structural racism and present-day social determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Deal era's Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) programme has garnered notoriety for denying Black communities financial investment based on their race through the practice known as redlining. It is possible that redlining influenced future investment in these neighbourhoods by making them more appealing to gentrifiers through creating a rent gap or increasing the percentage of non-White populations. To explore the link between HOLC redlining and gentrification, we drew upon a sample of 58 cities across the United States from the Mapping Decline project. We also leveraged historical Census data collected by IPUMS and the Longitudinal Tract Database, as well as data on urban renewal from Renewing Inequality to control for intervening factors. Findings indicate that HOLC redlining can either directly or indirectly relate to gentrification depending on when gentrification begins. These findings encourage more consideration of the role of racist government policies in determining when gentrification will occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redlining and other discriminatory government policies enacted during the first half of the Twentieth Century have had long-lasting negative effects on neighborhoods, especially those inhabited by people of color. This study attempts to link the practice of redlining to current-day indicators of neighborhood concentrated disadvantage and violent crime using spatio-temporal data from Chicago. Specifically, the study seeks to determine whether redlining has been associated with increased levels of concentrated disadvantage since its implementation in the 1930s. In addition, it seeks to determine whether redlining was associated with violent crime, and if that association was mediated by redlining's effect on concentrated disadvantage. The results indicate that redlining was associated with increases in both concentrated disadvantage and violent crime, and that redlining's relationship with violent crime was, indeed, partially mediated by its relationship with concentrated disadvantage. The findings from this study suggest that to reduce violent crime in urban communities, we cannot simply rely on our current punitive criminal justice system. Instead, policies should focus on reducing concentrated disadvantage and racial isolation by helping economically strengthen severely disadvantaged neighborhoods and by increasing residential mobility for individuals currently living in those neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental studies laboratory is an exciting place where students investigate, analyze, and reflect. Students test and apply theories and make abstract concepts concrete. As an example, ecology and environmental science are increasingly using "big data" to expand and refine research questions. This commentary reflects on the design and integration of an environmental justice and data analytics module in an environmental studies lab course. The module introduces an environmental justice framework to give students an understanding of tools and strategies to engage, assess, and intervene at multiple levels; while also developing advocacy and communication skills. Poor and minority populations have historically borne the brunt of environmental inequalities in the United States, suffering disproportionally from the effects of pollution, resource depletion, dangerous jobs, limited access to common resources, and exposure to environmental hazards. Paying particular attention to "redlining" and the ways that race, ethnicity, class, and gender have shaped the political and economic dimensions of environmental injustices, this module challenges students to critically examine redlining, socioeconomic, and environmental factors in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) to develop and explore research questions that may visually and/or statistically illuminate trends, patterns, and processes of environmenATL justice. This module also introduces some of the basic data handling and data analysis skills that give students an understanding of data types, descriptive statistics, sampling, and basic inferential statistics. By intentionally incorporating environmental justice activities and conversations in the classroom, instructors afford students an opportunity to engage in authentic examination of their world and make positive changes. Many of the skills learned and knowledge gained in this activity are directly transferable to post‐baccalaureate studies (e.g., graduate school, medical school, professional training, etc.) and the world of employment. The module can also be adapted to various curriculum, courses, and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on alcohol outlet density consistently shows greater disparities in exposure in disinvested communities. Likewise, structural racism via discriminatory housing practices has created many of the issues that beset contemporary disinvested neighborhoods. Little work, however, has examined the relationship between housing practices and alcohol outlet disparities. The central premise of our work is that these discriminatory and inequitable practices create distinctions in the alcohol environment, and that such disparities have implications for work on alcohol policy. Here we link alcohol outlet density with a spatial database examining redlining, blockbusting, and gentrification in Baltimore, Maryland, and Flint, Michigan (two cities with common experiences of urban disinvestment over the last 50 years). Standard measures are used to account for the impacts of neighborhood racial, socioeconomic, and housing composition in a multilevel model. Our findings highlight that gentrification and redlining are strongly associated with alcohol outlet density, while blockbusting is not. Gentrification and redlining also frequently co-occur in inner-urban areas, while the more suburban phenomenon of blockbusting rarely overlaps with either. These findings further contextualize nascent work on structural racism in housing that illustrates important disparities along the lines of these distinct practices. Future work should consider how legacy impacts of discriminatory housing patterns impact our communities today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is emerging evidence that structural racism is a major contributor to poor health outcomes for ethnic minorities. Structural racism captures upstream historic racist events (such as slavery, black code, and Jim Crow laws) and more recent state-sanctioned racist laws in the form of redlining. Redlining refers to the practice of systematically denying various services (e.g., credit access) to residents of specific neighborhoods, often based on race/ethnicity and primarily within urban communities. Historical redlining is linked to increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, and early mortality due to heart disease with evidence suggesting it impacts health through suppressing economic opportunity and human capital, or the knowledge, skills, and value one contributes to society. Addressing structural racism has been a rallying call for change in recent years—drawing attention to the racialized impact of historical policies in the USA. Unfortunately, the enormous scope of work has also left people feeling incapable of effecting the very change they seek. This paper highlights a path forward by briefly discussing the origins of historical redlining, highlighting the modern-day consequences both on health and at the societal level, and suggest promising initiatives to address the impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redlining was a discriminatory housing policy in the United States that began in 1933 and denoted neighborhoods with high proportions of Black individuals as "undesirable" and a high risk for lending, which therefore excluded people from obtaining traditional insured mortgages to purchase a home. Simultaneously, realtors discouraged Black individuals from purchasing homes in predominantly non-Black neighborhoods. This resulted in decreased home ownership and wealth accumulation among Black individuals and neighborhoods with high proportions of Black individuals. This study investigated rates of visual impairment and blindness (VIB) in neighborhoods that at one time were graded for redlining. Secondary data analysis of American Community Survey data and historical grades for redlining. United States census tracts (CTs) from 2010 with historical grades for redlining. One-way analysis of variance, Kruskal–Wallis test, chi-square test, and logistic regression modeling. The main outcome was CT percentage of residents reporting VIB and the association with historical grades for redlining. Grades were converted to numeric values (1 to 4, with higher values indicating worse grade) and aggregated over a CT based on the distribution of grades within to obtain a redlining score. Logistic regression was used to model the effect of redlining on the probability of having VIB. Eleven thousand six hundred sixty-eight CTs were analyzed. Logistic regression found that a 1-unit increase in average redlining score was associated with a 13.4% increased odds of VIB after controlling for CT measures of age, sex, people of color (any non-White race), state, and population size (odds ratio [OR], 1.134; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.131–1.138; P < 0.001). Similar results were observed for an additional model that adjusted for the estimated percentage of Black residents within a CT (OR, 1.180; 95% CI, 1.177–1.183; P < 0.001). Historical government-sanctioned residential segregation through redlining was found to be associated with higher proportions of people living with VIB in these neighborhoods today. Understanding how neighborhood segregation impacts eye health is important for planning improved mechanisms of eye care delivery to mitigate health disparities. Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found after the references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial residential segregation is considered a fundamental cause of racial health disparities, with housing discrimination as a critical driver of residential segregation. Despite this link, racial discrimination in housing is far less studied than segregation in the population health literature. As a result, we know little about how discrimination in housing is linked to health beyond its connection to segregation. Furthermore, we need to understand how health impacts differ across different types of housing discrimination. This review aims to assess the state of the population health literature on the conceptualization, measurement, and health implications of housing discrimination. We used PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews and presented the data on 32 articles that met our inclusion criteria published before January 1, 2022. Nearly half of the articles do not define housing discrimination explicitly. Additionally, there is considerable variation in how housing discrimination is operationalized across studies. Compared to studies using administrative data for housing discrimination exposures, studies using survey data were more likely to report a detrimental association with health outcomes. Synthesizing and comparing the results of these studies helps bridge methodological approaches to this research. Our review helps inform the debate on how racism impacts population health. Given the changing nature of racial discrimination over time and place, we discuss how population health researchers can approach studying various forms of housing discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To stabilise the housing market during the great depression, the government-sanctioned Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) created colour-coded maps of nearly 200 United States cities according to lending risk. These maps were largely driven by racial segregation, with the worst graded neighbourhoods coloured in red, later termed redlined neighbourhoods. We sought to investigate the association between historical redlining, and trends in environmental disparities across the US over the past few decades. We characterised environmental exposures including air pollutants (e.g. NO2 and fine particulate matter), vegetation, noise, and light at night, proximity hazardous emission sources (e.g. hazardous water facilities, wastewater discharge indicator) and other environmental and social indicators harnessed from various sources across HOLC graded neighbourhoods and extrapolated census tracts (A [lowest risk neighbourhoods] to D [highest risk neighbourhoods]). Lower graded areas (C and D) had consistently higher exposures to worse environmental factors. Additionally, there were consistent relative disparities in the exposures to PM2.5 (1981–2018) and NO2 (2005–2019), without significant improvement in the gap compared with HOLC grade A neighbourhoods. Our findings illustrate that historical redlining, a form of residential segregation largely based on racial discrimination is associated with environmental injustice over the past 2–4 decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate adaptation policies have received attention in major due to the dual challenges of external factors like global warming, and internal factors related to the transition from rapid urbanization to sustainable development. However, previous research on heat or climate mitigation has often focused on external factors, neglecting the internal factors throughout the process of urban development and planning history. Research has revealed that city center where urban heat island phenomena is prominent, are subjected to external factors of intense heat exposure, as well as deeply influenced by the internal factors “urban development legacy.” An increasing body of research note that the inequitable legacy from urban development could impact environmental equity outcomes of cities. Based on this, we argue that urban heat mitigation research should adopt the perspective of the urban development process. We then utilize the Heat Mitigation Framework to examine the tangible outcomes of environmental equity over an extended period of urban development. This study focuses on the Charlotte city center that have undergone multiple processes of redlining policies and rapid urbanization, using a research framework for environmental equity-oriented urban heat management to examine whether a series of heat mitigation policies have effectively reduced heat exposure and whether they have truly benefited heat-vulnerable groups. Based on 20 years of multi-source heat exposure and urban spatial data, this paper provides evidence of ongoing enhancements to the heat exposure environment in the Charlotte city center. However, despite these improvements, heat vulnerable group that are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of heat exposure did not experience commensurate benefits. The conclusion of this article validates the ongoing trends of global sustainable studies in nature-based solutions and social-ecological systems, highlighting the issue of environmental equity evaluation.