Reading Between the Red Lines: Evaluating Federal Neighborhood Classifications and Racial Succession in 1940s Chicago

This study examines how New Deal—era federally produced maps predicted racial changes in Chicago between 1940 and 1950, particularly the decline of White populations and growth of Black populations. Rather than focus on the explicit policy intent of the maps, this study treats them as institutional spatial artifacts that reflected the attitudes of policy makers which influenced neighborhood-level racial transitions. By analyzing geocoded Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) area maps and census data through spatial regression models, this study shows that areas poorly graded, or redlined, by the HOLC were more likely to experience racial succession, regardless of socioeconomic factors or proximity to Black communities. However, FHA classifications did not correspond with this succession. The findings suggest that the maps, despite their original intent, became embedded frameworks that illustrated early racial changes and foreshadowed the segregation that later solidified in U.S. cities.