Jordan Ryan

A Judgment Call: Indianapolis, Redlining, and Unjust Legacies

Jordan Ryan, an independent scholar and archivist, will undertake a comprehensive survey of the Federal Housing Administration’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining documentation for Indianapolis; this survey will provide detailed insight into population demographics, a visual analysis of residential architecture and a contextualization of changing land-use typologies. The resulting work will contribute to a better understanding of redlining and housing discrimination, disinvestment and later urban renewal and highway construction policies, while informing conversations about urban development and policy in the city today. Ryan plans to share the dataset through an open-access repository for future research use.

Jordan Ryan is an architectural historian, archivist and activist-scholar. They most recently managed the Indianapolis Bicentennial Collecting Initiative and curated the Indianapolis bicentennial exhibition for the Indiana Historical Society. They have a master’s degree in public history from IUPUI and a bachelor’s degree in art history from Herron School of Art and Design. Their scholarship revolves around the built environment, urban planning, historic preservation, marginalized communities, hostile architecture and LGBTQ historic sites.