Suburbanization and the Making of the Black Urban Core

The American city didn’t segregate itself. It was mapped, mortgaged, and mandated into shape—by zoning boards, federal banks, and suburban developers who knew exactly what they were building: white wealth and Black exclusion. From the redlining maps of the 1930s to the federally backed white-only suburbs of the 1950s, suburbia wasn’t a cultural drift. It was a policy machine. And it didn’t just decide where people lived—it decided who got to build equity, who got blamed for decline, and who inherited the American future.