Neighborhood Socioeconomic and demographic changes in Baltimore's (BES) Neighborhoods: 1930 to 2010

This dataset was created primarily to map and track socioeconomic and demographic variables from the US Census Bureau from year 1940 to year 2010, by decade, within the City of Baltimore's Mayor's Office of Information Technology (MOIT) year 2010 neighborhood boundaries. The socioeconomic and demographic variables include the percent White, percent African American, percent owner occupied homes, percent vacant homes, the percentage of age 25 and older people with a high school education or greater, and the percentage of age 25 and older people with a college education or greater. Percent White and percent African American are also provided for year 1930. Each of the the year 2010 neighborhood boundaries were also attributed with the 1937 Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) definition of neighborhoods via spatial overlay. HOLC rated neighborhoods as A, B, C, D or Undefined. HOLC categorized the perceived safety and risk of mortgage refinance lending in metropolitan areas using a hierarchical grading scale of A, B, C, and D. A and B areas were considered the safest areas for federal investment due to their newer housing as well as higher earning and racially homogenous households. In contrast, C and D graded areas were viewed to be in a state of inevitable decline, depreciation, and decay, and thus risky for federal investment, due to their older housing stock and racial and ethnic composition. This policy was inherently a racist practice. Places were graded based on who lived there; poor areas with people of color were labeled as lower and less-than. HOLC's 1937 neighborhoods do not cover the entire extent of the year 2010 neighborhood boundaries. The neighborhood boundaries were also augmented to include which of the year 2017 Housing Market Typology (HMT) the 2010 neighborhoods fall within. Finally, the neighborhood boundaries were also augmented to include tree canopy and tree canopy change year 2007 to year 2015.