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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

It’s easy to interpret that way without context. Black and Hispanic communities are always targeted for nasty development because they lack the political power to effectively resist and racist attitudes make it easy to explain things away.

It’s really easy to see this as FHA published maps with lending guidelines in the mid 20th century. The redline area (is don’t write mortgages) are black neighborhoods in most cities. If you look at the zoning map, those redline areas usually align with shared residential/industrial zoning.

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I disagree with this completely. If it was overall cheaper to build industrial infrastructure in so-called "white communities", companies would be doing it. This kind of capitalism largely concedes no such moral imperatives. Also, I am absolutely unconvinced that the zoning process is even remotely that simple. Reducing this to even the most ( unrealistically ) simple model, you end up with a chicken vs egg dilemma. If you put industrial zones in close proximity with areas of high socio-economic status, the economically mobile population living there will move away leaving an impoverished area behind. This is a gross oversimplification, but you should be able to see the problem. The relationship between undesirable industrial areas and poverty is indeed systemic, but it's not predatory.

How do you figure that 'White Communities' have become more affluent while minority communities are less so? There are plenty of examples of institutional racism, such as redlining, that have resulted in these divides and have/have not communities

Check out https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34758210-the-color-of-mo... for more information as to why this might be the case.

> Also, I am absolutely unconvinced that the zoning process is even remotely that simple.

Let's back up a second.

Are you familiar with the history of redlining in the U.S. in the 20th Century?

Robert Moses on building infrastructure that specifically kept blacks and Puerto Ricans out of the Long Island suburbs:

> The legacy of segregation in the suburbs, too, can be attributed in part to Moses’ personal biases, Caro says. The city planner didn’t want poor people of color from the city accessing Jones Beach, which was established while Moses was President of the Long Island State Park Commission, so he made it illegal for buses to travel on the parkways there. Furthermore, Caro says, “Then he had this quote, and I can still hear him saying it to me. ‘Legislation can always be changed. It’s very hard to tear down a bridge once it’s up.’ So he built 180 or 170 bridges too low for buses… this is how you can shape a metropolis for generations.”

Moses built the NYC Metro state park, expressway and parkway systems. He wasn't a fan of blacks, puerto ricans and poor jews, and deliberately built highway bridges about 4 feet too low for busses to pass, to keep "undesirables" out of Long Island beaches. This was also motivated by the attitude on Long Island, where the KKK was a major force at the time.

There's no core principles around business, and particularly at the intersection of business and local government. Realpolitik rules the day.

In terms of redlining, here's a great starting point about the city that I grew up in: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2017/02/16/albany-redlining...

Key quote to ponder:

> "Yet New Deal housing policy also underwrote racial discrimination. The FHA refused to guarantee mortgages in neighborhoods that were under the threat of "infiltration" by black, Hispanic, or foreign families. This policy remained in force until 1950.

Although the HOLC wound down its operations in 1951, its legacy long outlived it in the form of redlining maps. Between 1935 and 1938, HOLC consulted with realtors, builders, and bankers in cities around the country. Until the passage of fair housing and fair lending laws in the 1970s, these maps (and later versions of them drawn up by local lenders) determined where mortgage money went -- and to whom."

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