CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 25Environmental Justice and Health DisparitiesDisaster Management and ResilienceUrban Planning and Governance

Fractured landscapes: The racialization of home buyout programs and climate adaptation

Open access
Zavar, Elyse, Fischer, Lauren Ames·2021·Current Research in Environmental Sustainability
DOI 10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100043
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

The paper analyzes the intersection of racialized land development and U.S. buyout programs to advance a framework for socially sustainable climate adaptation. Using GIS and content analysis, we examine the relationship between the site of contemporary buyout programs and neighborhoods surveyed in the 1930s by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). To evaluate whether buyout programs are more likely to occur in redlined neighborhoods, we identify the spatial patterns and associations between these two policies. We find that the majority of FEMA-funded buyouts occurring in HOLC-surveyed cities were located outside of graded zones; yet for the buyouts occurring in the graded historic urban core, the majority were located in redlined districts. We then consider how the language used to describe each neighborhood by the HOLC characterizes amenity and hazard and how these descriptions influenced later policy interventions. Using buyouts and HOLC as an example, we engage the color-evasive policy literature to argue for climate adoption policies that recognize the racialized history that has produced unequal vulnerabilities to hazards rather than relying on buyouts as a technical solution to climate change. Moving past recognition towards an agenda of action, we contend that co-production of knowledge is essential to inform environmental-decision making and that the sustainability research community and its allied fields must center environmental justice frameworks for equitable climate adaptation.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100043

Cites

109 of 109 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Residents of compact neighborhoods in the city, and particularly low-income residents, have a lower carbon footprint because of the density and everything it enables, such as public transit and walkability.

    “Residents of compact neighborhoods in the city, and particularly lowincome residents, have a lower carbon footprint because of the density and everything it enables, such as public transit and walkability.159”

    From NPCC4: Advancing climate justice in climate adaptation strategies for New York City (2024) · cites this paper as [159]

    Section 4.1 describes access to transportation as a locational benefit of urban buyout properties, and the Methods section uses walking-distance buffers. Neither passage addresses whether residents of compact neighborhoods—particularly low-income residents—have lower carbon footprints because of density, transit, or walkability. Searches for carbon footprint, density, and emissions found no passage making that comparison. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 111 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Beauregard, R.A., 2018. Cities in the Urban Age. University of Chicago Press.
  2. Flyvbjerg, B., 2001. Making Social Science Matter. Cambridge University Press.
  3. Monchow, H., 1928. The Use of Deed Restrictions in Subdivision Development. Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities, Chicago, IL. The generation of flood hazards and disasters by urban development of floodplains. In: Montz, B.E., Parker, D.J. (Eds.), Floods. 1. Taylor & Francis, pp. 116-127.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Zavar, E., & Fischer, L. A.
Affiliations
University of North Texas (US)
Corresponding author
Zavar, Elyse
ORCID
Venue
Current Research in Environmental Sustainability
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021
Volume
3
Pages
100043
ISSN
2666-0490 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100043
OpenAlex
W3158095981
Cited by
25
References
111
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 3
FWCI
6.24
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Current Research in Environmental Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Environmental Justice and Health Disparities
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Disaster Management and Resilience
  • Social Sciences › Urban Studies › Urban Planning and Governance
Keywords
climate change adaptation, Home Owners' Loan Corporation, environmental justice, knowledge co-production

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review