The legacy of redlining – the 20th-century mapping practice that denied loans and other services to minorities based on their neighborhoods – continues to resonate in cities. New research from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia State University finds a spatial overlap between formerly redlined neighborhoods and violent injuries among youth in the city of Richmond today.
“What we’re seeing now is this pattern in present-day Richmond, nearly a century after redlining began, where adolescent youth that live in these communities are still at this tremendously elevated risk of incurring violent injuries and experiencing violence in their community,” said Samuel West, Ph.D., an assistant professor at VSU and an affiliate faculty member in the VCU Health trauma center’s Injury and Violence Prevention Program.
In 1934, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration began using demographic information to identify and map “desirable” and “undesirable” neighborhoods with low and high lending risks, respectively. The most “undesirable” neighborhoods, with high lending risks and “D” ratings, were typically highlighted in red…