Joe Steele

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was conceived in the 1930s to provide federal support to mitigate mortgage underwriting risks. In practice, firms quantified that risk largely through the lens of perceived racial desirability. The borders drawn by the HOLC were literal red lines that demarcated neighborhoods to be starved of investment. The lines still indicate areas marked by socioeconomic inequality. This project is an attempt to create a direct, concise, and easily interpretable representation of the practices of redlining and de jure segregation, a subject that is an obvious candidate for representation through visual media, given its geospatial nature and the general misunderstanding that persists regarding its history. The project page can be found at jsteele2003.github.io/msdv_thesis/redlining/dist/index.html .