Confronting Socioeconomic Racism in the Context of Urban Flooding in the Northeast

This study quantifies flood exposure across historical HOLC redlining zones in New York City using Sentinel-1 SAR imagery and Google Earth Engine. We analyzed six heavy-rainfall events (2018 2021) and projected future risk under moderate and extreme scenarios from the NYC Storm water Resiliency Plan.Hazardous neighborhoods exhibited 2.30 4.40% flooded pixels per event about double the 0.99 1.51% in Best areas and face over fourfold higher future flood exposure.Flood prevalence positively correlates with social vulnerability and crime rates and inversely with household income.These findings underscore enduring socioeconomic racism and the need for equity-focused climate resilience planning.