GIS Day at Harvard

We will be celebrating GIS Day 2025 with an open house, presentations, and more!

When: 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19 at 1730 Cambridge St., CGIS South Building, Concourse (basement) level.

Drop by to mix and mingle with CGA staff, learn about our updated 2026 training offerings, view posters highlighting GIS and spatial research at Harvard, get some CGA swag, and attend two different presentations. Here are the details:

3:00 - 4:00 p.m. Drop in meet-and-greet with maps, snacks, and swag.

3:15 - 3:45 p.m. Presentation: Getting started with spatial research at Harvard: resources, data, and training By Jeff Blossom (CGA), Bruce Boucek (GSD) and Belle Lipton (Map Collection)

4:00 - 5:00 p.m. Our featured presentation "The Role of Race in Private and Public Redlining in the 1930s"

By John R. Logan, Brown University, Rachel McKane, Brandeis University, and H. Jacob Carlson, Kean University

Abstract: The U.S. Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlined maps in the late 1930s are notoriously linked with racism. We are using newly developed historical GIS maps of census data in 1930 and 1940 to examine how neighborhood ratings were made in practice, and this presentation will describe how that mapping was accomplished. Some initial analyses have suggested that while race is a significant factor, its importance is greatly outweighed by market-based criteria such as neighborhood social class and share of homeowners. Our current analyses, still underway, extend the study from 23 to 45 cities. A key innovation is that we are also measuring the availability of home mortgages from the private sector before HOLC ratings were completed. This allows us to compare the racial component of HOLC's risk ratings to the possibly discriminatory behavior of the private market before the redlining maps were prepared.

This event is open to the Harvard Community and the general public. Please let us know you are coming by filling out this registration form. We look forward to seeing you on the 19th!