Historical Structural Racism as a Determinant in Contemporary Built Environment Inequalities

Richard Sadler, Michigan State University

After perhaps street patterns, housing remains one of the most durable aspects of urban development. As such, the policy decisions that dictate housing characteristics in one era can influence residents over a long time horizon. Many such policy decisions were made with the explicit intent of isolating certain racial or ethnic groups, in addition to industrial land uses and other ‘undesirable’ elements. For example, residential segregation is known to have long-lasting effects on neighborhoods and their residents. In this paper, we discuss various aspects of structural racism in the built environment. In particular, we explore the lack of conceptual depth on this topic in relation to contemporary built environment and health disparities. While elements such as redlining and gentrification have started receiving more attention, other elements such as blockbusting/white flight, urban renewal, and predatory lending have not been studied. We posit that a lack of connection to urban historians, geographic information scientists, and other disciplines with archival and technical expertise has limited the growth of this area, particularly with respect to health. We discuss the need for conceptual and methodological advances in these areas to ensure rigorous measurement of these understudied factors. We also explore how dissemination efforts across a broad spectrum of disciplines could help expand awareness of potentially important, long-lasting patterns in the built environment in the way that factors such as redlining and gentrification have been explored in the recent past.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 177. Geographies of Segregation and Inequality II