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In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the U.S. government set out to evaluate the riskiness of mortgages -- and left behind a stunning portrait of the racism and discrimination that has shaped American housing policy.
Now a new digital tool makes it easier than ever to see that history in high-resolution.
The project features the infamous redlining maps from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. In the late 1930s, the HOLC "graded" neighborhoods into four categories, based in large part on their racial makeup. Neighborhoods with minority occupants were marked in red -- hence "redlining -- and considered high-risk for mortgage lenders.
Redlining was carried out in cities big and small, with the help of local realtors and appraisers. The maps and descriptions eventually made it into the National Archives.
A newly revamped interactive site from "Mapping Inequality" takes scores of HOLC maps -- previously accessible only in person at the Archives or in scanned images posted piecemeal online -- and embeds them on a single map of the USA. Selecting a city reveals the old map images; zooming in shows a color overlay over a modern map with street names and building outlines.
A team of scholars at four universities took seven months to build the project. More than 150 cities are included in the map, which...