Nature, built environments, and risk in HOLC “redlining” decisions

• In Event: 50817 - Novel Approaches to Environmental Sociology

Abstract

Though urban environmental inequality is well-understood in the post-EPA period, iterative transformation in the urban built environment and poor environmental record-keeping mean that the role of urban environments in the formation of neighborhood-scale racial segregation remain poorly understood. To analyze the role of urban environments in the early 20th century racialization of urban space, this paper turns to the narrative area descriptions produced by HOLC assessors in the 1930s. Using emerging computational text analysis methods to model the thematic structure of HOLC field notes and linking that structure to the grades assigned to individual neighborhoods, the paper finds that urban environments were among several key factors that shaped HOLC decisions: Neighborhoods that were assessed to be dirtier, more polluted, and in closer proximity to environmentally hazardous industry were more likely to be assigned low HOLC grades, and thus more likely to suffer the long-term impacts associated with those decisions.

Author

• Jonathan Tollefson, University of Chicago