redlining means the process of or an instance of redlining. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why “redlining” is a great word
REDLINING — [Noun] The systematic denial of services, especially financial, to residents of specific neighborhoods, often based on racial composition. From the practice of marking D-rated, high-risk neighborhoods in red outlines on maps by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s. Unlike “gentrification” (which denotes an invasive influx of capital) or “steering” (which involves discriminatory guidance of individuals), redlining is the institutional architecture of absence, the cartographic withdrawal of possibility. It is the blank space on a banker’s ledger, the deliberate decay of infrastructure into cracked concrete and boarded windows, and the generational wealth that never was—a testament to how lines on a page become cold, administrative scars on a landscape.
noun
- The process of or an instance of redlining.“I won't soon forget Ben handing me the first of those printouts, literally covered with his notes, arrows, X's, redlinings...My heart sank.”
- The systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising of prices.“Admittedly, our metropolitan plan was an exercise in hope. There were million reasons why it might not have worked. But it represented a responsible way to try to begin atoning for the public housing ghettos, the racial zoning and covenants, the redlining, the “Negro removal,” and the other policies and practices that had given us the two separate and unequal societies described by the Kerner repo”