New York City
REDLINING & HEAT IN NEW YORK CITY
Sacrifice Zones
A sacrifice zone is a geographic area, as small as an urban neighborhood or as large as an entire region, characterized by environmental harm, economic disinvestment, or both.
Social inequities determine a sacrifice zone's boundaries, and are in turn intensified by them. Sacrifice zones are critical to understanding how inequality structures the climate crisis and vice versa.
Some of the sacrifice zones in US cities were systematically created by a federal policy in the 1930s called redlining, in which the government graded neighborhoods for loan eligibility from A ("best") to D ("hazardous").
Black and brown neighborhoods across the country were automatically considered "hazardous," graded D, and outlined in red-redlined. So were those “infiltrated” by Italians and Jews. Neighborhoods inhabited by wealthy, white non-immigrants were outlined in green.
In the map of southern Manhattan, red and green zones, as well as intermediate yellow and blue zones, are shaded in. Over the years, both public and private lenders have used these maps to make loan decisions, leading to significant cumulative underinvestment in redlined areas.
One marker of neighborhood underinvestment is the absence of trees, which provide powerful protection against extreme heat—one of the deadliest conditions caused by climate change. A striking heat gap in NYC corresponds with redlining and race. On hot summer days, neighborhoods graded D in the 1930s have surface temperatures up to 30 degrees hotter than neighborhoods graded A. This heat gap has severe health implications for Black and brown neighborhoods, compounded by less access to green space and air conditioning.
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Redlining
American Panorama: Mapping InequalityHeat
Landsat 8 Analysis-Ready Data / USGS Earth Explorer, Acquisition Date: 07/06/2020Trees
2021 National Land Cover Database % Tree Canopy
