Bay Area Red Lining
exploring the legacy of racialized zoning policy on current issues of inequity and displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area
Cities today reflect the legacy of their past. A “Front St” found a quarter mile from the water’s edge likely designates where the coast once stood before development through landfill. Roads too narrow for the comfort of the cars often imply they were designed with horse-and buggy transportation in mind. Architecture of homes and other buildings demonstrate the material availability, engineering capability, and design preferences of the time and place they were built. And racially and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods are often a vestige of segregationist and discriminatory zoning policies of the mid-20th century.
This web-based mapping project hosted by esri's Story Map focuses on the Legacy of “Redlining” in California’s San Francisco Bay area. Combining historic Redlining maps and accompanying primary source documents from the 1930s with data indicating the physical and socioeconomic environment of today demonstrates the lasting effects of the historic policy. And adding to that picture a layer of the recent gentrification trends of the Bay Area further exemplifies the persistence of socio-economic vulnerability in the institutionally targeted populations.
This map shows the classification systems from 1937 of the California Bay Area—Primarily the City's of San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland—overlaid on top of the area's current geography. The areas not colored were not designated as residential and therefore not color coded under the HOLC system, zoned for industrial, commercial, or recreational use, or not yet developed.
Green areas are "Grade A" and "highly desirable" for investment
Blue areas are "Grade B" and "somewhat desirable"
Yellow areas are "Grade C" and "declining"
Red areas are "Grade D" and "to be avoided"
Documentation: This map allows for exploration of some original documents from the East Bay that provide explanations for Grade D classifications (Red Pins). For contrast are also a few Grade A examples (Green Pins). Interact with the map here.
Poverty and Social Vulnerability: This Map illustrates Social Vulnerability from 2010. Underneath you can see the original Redlining layers in order to see correlation. Social vulnerability refers to sensitivity to this exposure due to population and housing characteristics: age, low income, disability, home value or other factors. Interact with the map here.
Infrastructure Development: Due to a lack of political agency, poorer neighborhoods are often the sight for necessary but undesirable infrastructure development within cities, such as polluting industrial facilities and highways. This map illustrates the impacts of pollution on population and the location of major highway. Pollution Burden is scored by CalEnviroScreen which identify California communities that are most affected by many sources of pollution, and where people are often especially vulnerable to pollution’s effects. Underneath you can view the original redlined districts, demonstrating a correlation between such housing financing policies and large-scale development of the built environment. Interact with the map here.
Racial Geography: In addition to economics and infrastructure, redlining has obviously had a significant effect on the racial makeup of American cities. This map shows the most prevalent racial group in specific neighborhood. Based on 2014 ACS estimates, Green represents non-Hispanic Whites, Orange represents Asians, and Red represents either African Americans or Hispanics. A darker color represents a higher presence. Using the slider, the original 1937 redlining maps can be used for comparison. Interact with the map here.
Diversity: This map shows the evolution of the Bay Area in terms of diversity, using the metric of percentage of total population that is White. Using the arrows on the left you can scroll through maps illustrating in two-decade apart increments how the area has changed in last century. Maps are from 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, and 2014 (US census). The neighborhoods designated as Red and Yellow on the redlining maps are the first to be nonwhite. This trend is more obvious at first in the maps from 1940 and 1960 decreasing in blatantness along with the end of legalized racial segregation, but pockets of direct correlation can still be noted in the most recent maps.
The final map (pictured) allows you to compare via a slider 2010 and 2014. It is the only one in the last century where the percentage of nonwhites has actually decreased (indicated by spots of darker orange in 2014 than 2010), alluding to the gentrification trends in the 21st century largely due to the growth of the tech industry in Northern California. Interact with the map here.
Gentrification and Tenure Insecurity: In the homeownership boom of the 1930s-1960s, less than two percent of the newly-financed housing was available to nonwhite families. Discriminatory mortgage lending prevented many families of color from owning homes and accumulating wealth. Now with processes of gentrification occurring throughout the Bay Area, many families are not secure enough in their housing tenure to be able to stay. Without owning their own homes these families are not able to benefit from the rise in property values that gentrification brings to some locals, but instead many suffer from rising rents.
The Map above illustrates very recent trends in rent increases. Most dramatically these increases are seen in neighborhoods that up until now have been fairly dominated by low-income nonwhites, perhaps indicating areas that are on the verge of gentrifying.
The 1968 Fair Housing Act made it illegal to "refuse to sell or rent... or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race." While the days of blatant systematic legal racism might be over, housing discrimination did not end in the 20th Century. And the ramifications of such discriminatory policies are now ingrained into American society, one of the many drivers of the persisting intertwinement of race and economic inequality.
Fall 2016
Completed using ArcGIS, esri StoryMap, and social explorer.
