I'm really coming from another direction. I don't think you need racism or classism to describe the behaviours that lead to neighbourhood shops disappearing fr

I'm really coming from another direction. I don't think you need racism or classism to describe the behaviours that lead to neighbourhood shops disappearing from suburbs, or not being planned for in the first place, though examples exist where those things are intertwined like you've illustrated. What I don't see is the causal link. This phenomenon occurs in other places in the world, places that don't have the same interweaving of racial issues throughout society that the USA has, and it doesn't occur in some locations within the USA that does have those same issues. It may be true that all suburbs in the USA were founded for racist reasons, or that the residents make all decisions about perceived house value and their community based on racist ideals, or that city planning policies are put in place to fulfil racist agendas, however; It seems far more likely that the underlying causes are driven, like the rest of the world, by - rational individual economic decisions, and - policy informed by lobbyists Now the effect of these decisions or policies may well be racist or classist - like I said above, people with money tend to have more agency, and it's definitely true that the USA has had and continues to have significant divides in wealth between various racial groups. There are also examples of specific, explicit racism that have caused this effect, but those pale next to the impact that the widespread adoption of the car (and many other things!) had on decision making. These decisions changed the way our world works, the true impact of them took decades to register, and we are only now adjusting for what we have learned. There are racial and classist components to these impacts, but that doesn't mean the decisions were (on the whole) motivated by race or class.