Detroit, then and now
1937
On the historic maps, click on an area to see the appraiser's description, which will appear on the right. To enlarge those descriptions, click on it and it will appear on the left. Scroll around to see how they identified the neighborhood and its inhabitants and how appraisers felt about the area's long-term prospects.
2015
Detroit's black population was confined to several pockets of the city in the 1930s as local officials and white residents worked to keep the city segregated. Today, the city is majority black. The legacy of redlining practices today shows up mostly in the suburbs, with the Grosse Pointes, Dearborn and other towns still largely all white (colored in green, blue and yellow), as black movement into the suburbs has for the most part been limited to a handful of inner-ring communities like Southfield and Oak Park (both shaded red).
See the other historic maps in this series:
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