AIA San Diego’s Urban Design Committee, the Environment Design Council, and Housing the Next One Million (HN1M) are joining forces to bring you a special presentation by Ricardo Flores and his team from LISC San Diego.
Mapping Inequality is the work of a four-university collaborative, that aggregated the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps and accompanying neighborhood descriptions from across the nation and presents them in a browsable, digital map that helps us visually explore inequality in America.
Using Mapping Inequality’s work as a base, LISC San Diego zooms in on the HOLC redlining map of San Diego to acquaint San Diegans with the characterization of our neighborhoods and communities, then and now. From the “servant’s quarters” of La Jolla to the several areas “restricted to the Caucasian race”, the federally ascribed characterizations of communities in San Diego force us to confront our thoughts and feelings about how we would describe those areas today. How they have changed versus how they have remained the same.
As we think about issues of zoning, affordable housing, “preserving neighborhood character”, how often is today’s prevailing policy and language resonant with the ones we witness in these maps?
