Coomes and Mooney Publish Article Using Google Street View to Measure Neighborhood Disinvestment in the Jackson, Mississippi Area
Posted: 2026-10-30 12:30:22 (CSDE Research)
Former CSDE trainee David Coomes (Epidemiology), CSDE Affiliate Steve Mooney (Epidemiology), and co-authors recently published a research article in the American Journal of Epidemiology titled, “‘Once Thriving’: Using Google Street View Virtual Audits to Measure Neighborhood Disinvestment in the Jackson, Mississippi Tri-County Area.” Disinvestment in segregated, low-income Black communities is rooted in structural racism and contributes to racial health inequities. The authors conducted Google Street View audits in the Jackson tri-county area, a mid-sized urban region in the US South, engaging residents and community organizers to inform their interpretation of the local context. They used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to build a disinvestment score for each street segment. Scores were higher in historically Black neighborhoods and within Jackson city limits than in the surrounding majority-White counties, and they increased over time in some neighborhoods. The score was positively associated with housing vacancy, unemployment, and residential segregation by race and income, and negatively associated with owner-occupied housing. The findings suggest that virtual audits can be a valid tool for measuring physical signs of disinvestment in low-density Southern cities and the built environment’s contribution to population health inequities. The full article can be found here. Congratulations Drs. Coomes and Mooney!
Date: 10/30/2026