If you want to understand the modern American city—and so much else about this country—consider exploring a new interactive mapping project from the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Building off several previous projects, Mapping Inequality is a database of more than 150 federal “risk maps,” the New Deal DNA that would dictate decades of disinvestment in cities. These maps, as Oscar Perry Abello writes for Next City, illustrate "how the great government-baked wealth-creation machine of the 1930s only worked for white people."
They’re a reminder that letting huge swaths of the American city fall apart was essentially federal policy beginning in the Great Depression, when banks began to withhold lending from certain communities based on color-coded risk maps.
These maps are fascinating. I checked my city of origin, San Francisco, and my old 'hood was firmly in the red. Still was pretty run-down when I was growing up and when I left (I was a teen, end of the 70's). But now it's swanky as can be. Damn dot-com gentrifiers!
We moved from the projects in Hunter's Point to the projects in North Beach, definitely a step up, before heading for the 'burbs in '54. You can take the beagle out of the ghetto…
My dad was a Jr. High history teacher when we were still in San Fran, and he always said the toughest kids he taught were the Hunter's Point bunch. Maybe he had you as a student, eh? Although, I'm thinking he might not have been there in '54, I'll have to check.
We lived in the Mission District, near the projects, in a really cool old pre-earthquake duplex. I think the Haight Ashbury hippies used to meet their dealers in our 'hood. Then they'd take their bongos up to the park and play all night. It was a trippy time.
I didn't attend any SF schools, as I was only two years old when we fled. A bunch of kids I knew went to Catholic schools in The City. Made for a long day, catching the Greyhound at oh dark 30..
The lede from "Slate"'s |pastiche|:
Not totally skin hue
. My Cleveland hood then was Polish/Slav, Czech steelworkers.
'Definitely declining'
surrounded by 'hazardous' with same demo.
Huh. My gummint projects weren't color-coded, but definitely surrounded by "hazardous".
Interesting to note that Queens showed no 'Best' areas at about the time Donald was born.
"Classiest"?
The neighborhood I grew up in didn't exist in 1940. It was a void between towns.
These maps are fascinating. I checked my city of origin, San Francisco, and my old 'hood was firmly in the red. Still was pretty run-down when I was growing up and when I left (I was a teen, end of the 70's). But now it's swanky as can be. Damn dot-com gentrifiers!
We moved from the projects in Hunter's Point to the projects in North Beach, definitely a step up, before heading for the 'burbs in '54. You can take the beagle out of the ghetto…
My dad was a Jr. High history teacher when we were still in San Fran, and he always said the toughest kids he taught were the Hunter's Point bunch. Maybe he had you as a student, eh? Although, I'm thinking he might not have been there in '54, I'll have to check.
We lived in the Mission District, near the projects, in a really cool old pre-earthquake duplex. I think the Haight Ashbury hippies used to meet their dealers in our 'hood. Then they'd take their bongos up to the park and play all night. It was a trippy time.
I didn't attend any SF schools, as I was only two years old when we fled. A bunch of kids I knew went to Catholic schools in The City. Made for a long day, catching the Greyhound at oh dark 30..