Environment, Racialization, and Territorial Stigma: Evidence from HOLC Texts

Jonathan Tollefson, University of Chicago

This paper uses network-based text analysis approaches to map the conceptual structure of HOLC assessment documents and to analyze how assessment discourses shaped HOLC grading decisions. I find that HOLC assessments reflected and mobilized a particular sociospatial imaginary: one that juxtaposed a close analysis of urban context with a generalized, legible assessment of urban space and value. I further argue that the HOLC assessment process articulated race, space, and value through a fundamentally socio-environmental framework: That urban built and natural environments formed a crucial terrain linking ideologies of racial "threat" to urban structure and logics of valuation. Supporting this argument, I find that natural and built environments were a key factor contributing to the grades assigned by HOLC cartographers: Neighborhoods that were assessed to be dirtier, more polluted, and in closer proximity to environmentally hazardous industry were more likely to be assigned low HOLC grades - and thus more likely to suffer the long-term impacts associated with being shut out from mortgage resources. Together, these findings provide a basis for a structured understanding of the HOLC assessment process, and provide evidence for the importance of urban environments in the early formation of segregated and unequal urban geographies.

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 Presented in Session 182. Geographies of Racialized Dispossession