Housing, Spatial Inequality, and Segregation

Residential segregation, the physical separation of different social groups across urban space, is one of the most consequential features of the American urban landscape and a powerful mechanism through which inequality is reproduced across generations. While segregation exists along multiple dimensions including class, ethnicity, and immigration status, racial residential segregation, particularly between Black and white Americans, has been the most extreme and persistent form. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid (1993) demonstrated that Black-white residential segregation reached levels they termed hypersegregation in many American metropolitan areas, characterized by high scores on five distinct dimensions: unevenness in distribution across neighborhoods, isolation from other groups, clustering of Black neighborhoods, concentration in small geographic areas, and centralization near the urban core.

Massey and Denton argued that this extreme segregation was not a natural result of individual preferences or economic differences but was created and maintained by deliberate institutional practices. The Federal Housing Administration, established in the 1930s, institutionalized racial discrimination in mortgage lending by refusing to insure mortgages in or near Black neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining because the neighborhoods were literally outlined in red on maps used by government and private lenders.

Real estate agents steered Black homebuyers away from white neighborhoods through racial steering, while restrictive covenants legally prohibited the sale of property to Black buyers. White residents who opposed integration used violence, intimidation, and organized resistance to maintain neighborhood racial boundaries. Although explicit racial discrimination in housing was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, residential segregation has proven remarkably persistent. Contemporary mechanisms include exclusionary zoning that mandates large lot sizes and single-family housing, effectively pricing out lower-income households; the perpetuation of historical patterns through the intergenerational transmission of wealth and the geographic inheritance of neighborhood advantage or disadvantage; ongoing discrimination in mortgage lending and real estate practices, documented by audit studies; and the racial wealth gap, which limits the housing options available to Black and Latino families.