Redlining, Community Wealth, and Air Pollution: A Tale of Three Cities-Boston, Nashville, and Detroit
Recommended Citation
Kahn J, Luttmann-Gibson H, Blossom J, Ryan PH, Coull BA, Datta S, Hartert T, Zanobetti A, Ramratnam SK, Mendonça EA, Beamer PI, Biagini JM, Habre R, Johnson CC, Joseph CLM, Khurana Hershey GK, Rivera-Spoljaric K, Shiroshita A, Zoratti EM, Gern JE, Gold DR. Redlining, Community Wealth, and Air Pollution: A Tale of Three Cities-Boston, Nashville, and Detroit. J Urban Health. 2026.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-11-2026
Publication Title
Journal of urban health
Keywords
Air pollution; Area wealth; Equity; Redlining
Abstract
Despite US air quality improvements since the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, disparities in air pollution between communities persist. We studied whether persistent within-city geospatial disparities in pollution continued over time in historically minoritized and under-resourced areas codified as “redlined” in 1930’s government mapping. We evaluated how longitudinal demographic patterns and disparities in community wealth and resources related to historical redlining score category in three US urban areas: Boston, MA, Nashville, TN, and Detroit, MI. We then examined longitudinal associations of redlining with changing levels of the air pollutants PM(2.5) and NO(2) between 2000 and 2016 in these cities. Our approach utilized daily estimates of air pollution levels from models with high spatiotemporal resolution, digitized redlining maps, and census data to evaluate temporal trends by redlining categories at the census tract level. Demographic and socioeconomic changes over time differed by city, but for each city, historically redlined areas continued to have a greater proportion of Black residents, higher poverty rates, lower income and home values, and a higher social vulnerability index (SVI). Over all areas, air pollution levels declined markedly over time, but for annual averaged NO(2), redlining-area-associated exposure disparities persisted in Boston and widened in Nashville. In contrast, by 2016, regardless of redlining history, areas in Detroit had similar NO(2) pollution levels. Our results highlight the lasting social, economic, and environmental effects of urban discriminatory practices, also showing that in some cities, areas may be equally exposed to specific criteria pollutants, regardless of area wealth.
PubMed ID
41814070
ePublication
ePub ahead of print
