Historical Redlining and Park Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Big Mobility Data
Year: 2023
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND AND AIM: Emerging evidence suggests an adverse impact of redlining, a discriminatory practice decades ago, on multiple health outcomes. However, whether and to what degree redlining contributes to these disparities remains unknown particularly during a pandemic. With newly available mobility data tracking the locations of a large number of mobile devices, this study links historical redlining with changes in green space use during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: HOLC neighborhood redlining grade data were merged with SafeGraph mobility data at census tract level for New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Ordinary Least Square regressions are conducted to assess the association between dominant redlining grade and relative change in park visits in census tracts by comparing the lockdown period to the reference period. Spatial error and lag models are also used to account for the spatial autocorrelation between neighboring census tracts. RESULTS: Park visits during the lockdown period in 2020 decreased by about one-third to nearly one-half in the three cities compared to the same period in 2019. The influence of historical redlining varied across neighborhoods and cities. In New York City, neighborhoods with more redlined areas experienced the largest drop in park visits, sharper decreases concentrated in neighborhoods that were previously graded as “best” or “still desirable” in Philadelphia, but the effect of redlining was barely present in Chicago. In addition, there is also evidence that changes in park visits are positively correlated between neighboring census tracts in New York City (and to a lesser extent, in Chicago), but it’s not observed in Philadelphia. CONCLUSIONS: The link between historical redlining and current green space use is context-specific. As neighborhood dynamics vary across places, more decreases in park visits were observed in both historically lower-graded (New York City) and higher-graded neighborhoods (Philadelphia).
Source: ISEE Conference Abstracts
Authors: Kai Zhang, Yuanfei Li, Youqin Huang, Rui Li
Institution: University at Albany, State University of New York
Language: English
Topic: Urban Green Space and Health
Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4390994147