Metropolitics

“The Apartment You Can Own with Pride”: Federally Insured Black Housing Cooperatives, 1950–1955

Nicholas Shatan — 2025-11-25T06:00:00Z

Postwar Black cooperatives insured by the federal government trouble the binary of public and private in housing development.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” In October 1950, civil-rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune spoke when the cornerstone was laid for Parkway Gardens, perhaps the first apartment development cooperatively owned by African Americans in Chicago (Chicago Defender 1950). Built next to the “L” rapid-transit station at 63rd St and South Park Avenue on the

- Essays / race, segregation, residential segregation, housing, cooperative housing, Federal Housing Administration, United States, Black neighborhoods, real estate

Before Redlining and Beyond

Alex B. Hill — 2021-11-02T06:00:00Z

There is a larger story of spatial racism in cities before and beyond redlining. Spatial racism was not limited to a single set of maps, but is embedded within institutions. The long history of spatial racism must be teased out and examined as new data-driven practices generate inequitable opportunity in cities.
Over the past decade, “redlining” has received increasing attention in the popular press and across academic disciplines. Redlining, or the discriminatory practice of denying

- Essays / redlining, racism, spatial racism, neighborhood, residential segregation, segregation, housing, cartography, mapping

Federal Anti-Segregation Milestones Demand Local Mobilization

Justin Steil — 2015-11-24T06:00:00Z

In June 2015, the US Supreme Court affirmed a legal tool that stands to hold municipalities and lenders accountable to fair housing and residential integration goals. In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released a rule that offers new points of leverage in the fair-housing planning process. However, both will require sustained mobilization if they are to have any real impact.
The past year has witnessed the most vigorous public discussion of residential segregation and

- From the Field / segregation, housing, United States, discrimination, supreme court, fair housing, residential segregation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, mobilization, redlining