ASSOCIATIONS OF HISTORICAL REDLINING AND FLOOD RISK PROPERTIES IN PHILADELPHIA, PA, and EFFECT MODIFICATION BY NEIGHBORHOOD GENTRIFICATION
Year: 2023
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: BACKGROUND AND AIM: Upstream drivers, such as the historical deprivation of funding for built water infrastructure in certain neighborhoods, may place context for current spatial inequities in flood vulnerability. Historical redlining, introduced by the Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1938, graded neighborhoods from A-“best” to D-“hazardous” which indicated the risk for mortgage approval based on the neighborhood’s racial composition. Previous research indicates that historically “hazardous” neighborhoods may be associated with increased climate vulnerability indicators such as land surface temperatures and lower tree canopy cover yet few studies have explored associations with flood risk or how the extent to which these relationships vary across categories of neighborhood gentrification. METHOD: To calculate census tract level percentages of properties at risk for flood, we utilized 2022 First Street’s risk assessment data which ranked the number of properties within each census tract that were flood prone from 0-10. We used 1938 HOLC grade maps and areal weighting to identify historically redlined neighborhoods. We identified census tracts that were ineligible to gentrify, were eligible but did not gentrify, and did gentrify between years 1990-2000, by calculating changes in neighborhood sociodemographics using decennial Census data. We calculated associations between categorical redlining grades and the continuous measure of tract-level flood risk percentages, overall and stratified by gentrification categories. RESULTS: Across all 384 residential Philadelphia census tracts, the mean risk score percentage was 15.2±18.5. Census tracts subjected to historical redlining had higher mean percentages of flood risk (HOLC Dhazardous= 18.1±21.5 versus HOLC A+Bbest/ still desirable = 11.3±8.6). Lastly, HOLC Dhazardous census tracts that underwent gentrification were less likely to have properties that were flood risk (mean=12.9 ±14.5) compared to those that did not (mean= 15.9±18.8). CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary results suggest that flood risk is related to a past indicator of structural racism (redlining) and that these relationships may be attenuated by contemporary gentrification processes.
Source: ISEE Conference Abstracts
Institutions: Drexel University, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4390994606