UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

This report is a collaboration between the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and a research team of graduate students in the Master of Public Policy Program at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. In this report, we conducted research to understand the intertwined history of redlining and highway development in the state of California, the lasting discriminatory legacies of this history throughout the state, and potential policy solutions to rectify these legacies and advance racial and environmental justice for impacted communities of color. To conclude this research, we analyzed a set of policy options to provide specific recommendations for California State agencies to adopt in order to best achieve these goals. The report begins with an overview of the history of redlining in California, illustrating how decisions in highway development were built on the policy foundation of redlining to disrupt and dispossess marginalized communities and people of color across the state. With predominantly non-white residential areas in California cities officially redlined as “high-risk” areas due to the race of their residents, federal policy formally recommended the use of highways as physical barriers in those neighborhoods to enforce segregation. Additionally, federal policies incentivized local authorities to concentrate disruptive and high-polluting land uses in redlined communities of color so as not to devalue residential neighborhoods that were not already devalued by redlining. Together, these discriminatory policy practices have saddled generations of non-white Californians with socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental burdens not experienced by their white counterparts. These burdens persist today and are linked to diminished outcomes of health, wealth, happiness, and safety for Californians of color. This report primarily examines two specific impacts: residential racial segregation and PM2.5 pollution concentration.  Through a combination of research, mapping, and statistical analysis, striking evidence emerges of the continued heavy segregation of people of color in previously redlined areas and neighborhoods near highways throughout the state. This trend is mirrored and amplified for the segregation of white people in formerly A-rated areas. Furthermore, a positive correlation between highway proximity and PM2.5 levels is amplified in formerly redlined areas and is indicative of the increased burden of overall pollution faced by these communities in California. The research and analysis that underpin these findings utilize data and historical records from all eight California cities subjected to redlining assessments. Throughout the narrative of this history and mapping of its contemporary impacts, Stockton and Los Angeles serve as case studies. After illustrating the ongoing discriminatory harms stemming from the history of redlining and highway development in California, the report examines the current policy landscape across the state to identify challenges and opportunities relevant to efforts aimed at addressing these harms. Challenges include the continued dependence on highways and the political divisiveness of policies explicitly focused on racial justice, while opportunities include increased funding for environmental initiatives and growing support for prohousing, integrated communities across California.