Digital Redlining and Its Enduring Impact on Communities

When Wendyliz Martinez found the internet lacking in her mother's home in the Bronx, she could have chalked it up to a number of issues: a faulty router, the Wi-Fi setup or a slow speed tier, perhaps. But she suspected something else after her mom switched to a new router, only to find the speeds still lagging. If old equipment wasn't to blame and Martinez's mom was getting the fastest speeds she could afford in an area without other internet provider options, were other households in the neighborhood experiencing the same thing? Martinez decided to turn that question into a research project. Using US Census Bureau data, Martinez spent months mapping the state of internet connectivity in the Bronx. What she discovered confirmed her suspicion: Low-income neighborhoods in New York City had less access to high-speed internet than wealthier neighborhoods nearby. In fact, the Bronx was one of the city's worst-connected boroughs. But was the correlation between low-income neighborhoods and lack of adequate internet access an indication of deeper systemic issues? A lot of researchers seemed to think so.