Detroit Redlining Map in 1940

A data visualization of urban history and racializing space
Created with urban historian Robert Fishman

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This map illustrates in three layers some of the impacts of a racist government policy called redlining:

1. The base map shows the extent of street network development, as well as the locations of important industries, institutions, and urban features in 1940.

2. The population dot map shows the areas where Black and Whites lived in the segregated city.

3. The redlining map shows the areas where government and banks chose not to invest, and to therefore deprive people living there of homes.

All three features – the physical city, the urban residents, and the urban policy of redlining – are interlinked. By displaying these three features together, previously invisible aspects of urban history become visible in plain site to the public.

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Data sources:

Topoview from USGS for street network maps
Mapping Inequality Projecct for redlining data
IPUMS at the University of Minnesota for population and race by census tract

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Created with help from:

Robert Fishman academic mentor
Karl Longstreth from the Clark Map Library at the University of Michigan
Gergely Baics and Wright Kennedy from Columbia History Department
whose project about racializing space in New York City inspired this proposal