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Paving the way: redlining and contemporary transportation emissions in US cities

delete2026-07-06
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R
Rachel McKane *
P
Patrick Trent Greiner
DOI:10.1093/sf/soag083delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
We expand upon the structural human ecology tradition by recasting its classic drivers as historically racialized mechanisms operating within a system of racial capitalism. We draw on critical approaches to environmental justice to link multiscalar processes to material infrastructures, theorizing redlining and interstate-highway planning as coupled racial projects that organize the production of transportation emissions across urban space. To test this empirically, we combine Home Owners’ Loan Corporation grades with on-road carbon dioxide (CO₂) and estimate multilevel models for 9661 census tracts nested in 194 US cities (2010, 2015). Redlined areas exhibit higher on-road CO₂ net of contemporary tract characteristics. Associations between affluence, whiteness, and emissions are strong in greenlined areas but largely flat in redlined areas, and public-transit commuting shares show little relationship to emissions across grades. Together, the results indicate that spatially fixed, historically racialized transport infrastructure continues to concentrate emissions in disinvested neighborhoods regardless of who lives there now.

Journal

Social Forces cover
Social Forces
IF:
2.7
Papers:
5.5K
Citations:
9.7K

Organization

B
brandeis university
Scholars:
257
Papers: 140
Citations: 0
U
university of washington
Scholars:
7.8K
Papers: 3.7K
Citations: 2
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