Tract-Level Housing Unit and Urbanization Estimates for the Continental U.S., 1940-2019

This map shows the historical housing unit change in consistent 2010 census tract boundaries from 1940 to 2019. In many cities over that time period—especially in the 1950s and 1960s—federal, state, and local governments demolished thousands of housing units as part of their "urban renewal" programs. These neighborhoods were typically in the older parts of city centers, contained lower income populations, and had higher shares of Black, Hispanic, and immigrant residents than their respective cities. Homes were typically replaced with new interstate highways and thoroughfares, stadiums, civic buildings, parking lots, high rises, rights of way, and other non-residential uses. In a fraction of cases, homes were replaced with public housing. Many of these areas show up as red on this map because they still have not regained the level of housing they had before World War II. Urban renewal is not the only reason for housing loss. Many tracts in places that have been undergoing population decline—especially cities in the North and Midwest and many rural communities—have also lost considerable amounts of housing over this time period. On the other side of things, many suburban and exurban areas—especially in the South and West—have experienced significant population and housing unit growth. These places show up as blue on this map. The data used to make this map comes from the Historical Housing Unit and Urbanization Database 2010, or HHUUD10. To read more on the methodologies used to estimate the housing unit counts, please refer to the methods paper. To download the data in tabular form, please visit the data repository. To download the feature layer used to make this map or read about the attributes, see the feature layer. Please also remember that these data are estimates and are therefore imperfect. They should be treated like all interpolated data: with caution and a healthy dose of skepticism. Citation: Markley, S.N., Holloway, S.R., Hafley, T.J., Hauer, M.E. 2022. Housing unit and urbanization estimates for the continental U.S. in consistent tract boundaries, 1940–2019. Scientific Data 9 (82). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01184-x