Mapping Inequality

Redlining in New Deal America

Contact Us

We very much welcome feedback, comments, and suggestions. Before you write, you might check out answers to a few of the most common questions we receive below.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have a redlining map for my city?

If it is not here, we are afraid to say that we almost certainly do not.

HOLC limited their city survey program to cities with populations of 40,000 or more. The Federal Housing Administration produced many more redlining maps than HOLC and over a longer period of time. But they reportedly destroyed them amid litigation after the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968; only a handful of surviving maps have been located. Many banks undoubtedly produced maps. But in many cases they likely discarded them when they were out-of-date; if there are some redlining maps left in their records, many banks would likely be hesitant to share evidence of their past discriminatory practices.

It is important to emphasize that just because a redlining map of your community did not survive, that does not mean that redlining was not practiced there. As we said, the FHA and banks had their own maps—or in local circumstances sometimes even mental maps. Racial discrimination in real estate lending was, unfortunately, ubiquitous in the United States for much of the twentieth century.


Can I reproduce the maps in an article/book/exhibit/art installation?

The maps and area descriptions themselves are in the public domain, so, yes, you can use those in any way you would like. They are all available for download.

As are the georectified rasters and spatial data, which are available under a CC-BY-NC license. They can be used for pretty much anything that is not commercial with just a citation for Mapping Inequality. Speaking of which ...


How should I cite Mapping Inequality?

For an academic article or paper, some options for the major citation styles are:

Chicago
Nelson, Robert K., LaDale Winling, et al. "Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America." Edited by Robert K. Nelson. American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History, 2023. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining.
APA
Nelson, R. K., Winling, L, et al. (2023). Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America. Digital Scholarship Lab. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining.
MLA
Nelson, Robert K., LaDale Winling, et al. “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.” Edited by Robert K. Nelson, American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History, 2023, dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining.

If you are using a map or figure from Mapping Inequality in a newspaper or online article, "Courtesy of Mapping Inequality," "Source: Mapping Inequality," "Mapping Inequality, public domain image," (the last for scans of the map) or the like are all fine.