Play around here.

https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=a73ce5ba85ce4c3f80d365ab1ff89010

This is my city, and I’ve researched the topic of redlining after this map came out. I’ve also talked to the author of that project. Redlining happened in the late 30’s.

So Louisville is an old city and a river city. Most of the early economy was based on the river and most jobs and houses were close to the river. We also had segregated neighborhoods that were spread out in a few different areas, but mostly they were the south part of the west side of town and on the eastern edge. The center was downtown and south of that was a very rich Victorian neighborhood.

So all this changed in 1937, the year of the Great Flood. This flood ravaged the Ohio river valley and may be the highest water the Ohio river has ever seen, even in prehistoric times. This flood caused complete losses of houses and businesses.

So redlining was started as a way to protect banks from making bad loans and losing money and causing another financial crisis. This happened at a time where the US was coming out of the Great Depression and this was a very real threat. So they made maps based on race, income, etc... but in Louisville they also made decisions based on potential for flooding.

The Great Flood created a mass migration out of the city into the suburbs, that also happened to be the high ground. People that couldn’t afford to leave, stayed in the flood prone area west of downtown. Because of redlining property values also dropped, meaning some couldn’t sell their houses. Businesses closed or moved out leaving many people jobless.

Through the war there was great growth in our city. Factory jobs were plentiful and whole industries sprung up over night almost. Because of the flood, no factories were built near the river. They were built outside the city, thus furthering the migration. Subdivisions were going up on farm land and other vacant land. And were outside the city proper and therefore didn’t get city services. So they formed their own cities. We have 81 in the county, some were whites only, but others were just exclusive to keep blacks out.

So effectively half of the town lost high earners, lost jobs, and lost property value the other half moved away and formed their own cities and neighborhoods shutting out the rest.

So what’s interesting in Louisville is that redlining caused a lot of problems for black people, but it mostly affected the entire west side of the city, regardless of race. Because of the flooding, white only neighborhoods were also redlined causing them the same fate. Currently the neighborhood I work in is demographically still 78% white, but suffered the same fate as the black neighborhoods south of it.