THE HILLS, THE FLATLANDS, AND THE LINES BETWEEN

 THE HILLS, THE FLATLANDS, AND THE LINES BETWEEN

A city may appear to have grown naturally—hills above, flatlands below, highways crossing between them, neighborhoods spreading wherever geography allowed. But when we examine the history beneath the streets, we discover that nature created the terrain; human decisions determined who would benefit from it.

The hills and the flatlands therefore tell more than a story of elevation. They tell a story of power.

In the hills, distance from industry became an advantage. Trees matured. Property appreciated. Mortgages became available. Schools benefited from surrounding wealth. Quiet streets and restrictive land-use patterns protected residential stability. Over generations, geography became inheritance.

In the flatlands, proximity became burden. Railroads, ports, warehouses, factories, freeways, truck routes, and industrial uses were concentrated near communities already denied equal access to credit and property. What began as discrimination in housing eventually became inequality in environment, health, education, and wealth.

The hill accumulated protection while the flatland accumulated exposure.

And between them appeared the lines.

Some lines were drawn by banks.
Some by zoning boards.
Some by developers.
Some by transportation agencies.
Some were written into property deeds.
Others were poured into concrete.

Redlining said where capital should not travel. Restrictive covenants said where certain people should not live. Highways determined which neighborhoods could be divided. Industrial zoning determined who would live beside pollution. Property appreciation determined whose children would inherit wealth.

Eventually, the line no longer needed to mention race.

The geography itself had learned how to reproduce the inequality.

This is one of the most difficult truths about structural injustice: a discriminatory law can disappear while the landscape it created continues functioning. The covenant can become unenforceable. The redlining map can enter an archive. The language can be removed from the deed. Yet the house remains valuable, the freeway remains in place, the polluted corridor remains polluted, and accumulated wealth continues passing from one generation to another.

That is why equality before the law, indispensable though it is, cannot by itself repair inequality embedded in land.

The question facing the modern city is therefore not merely whether everyone is legally permitted to climb the hill. We must also ask what happened during the generations when some were permitted to accumulate there while others were systematically kept below.

Justice cannot flatten the hills, nor should it.

But justice can flatten the inequality of opportunity.

It can plant trees where shade was denied. It can clean contaminated soil. It can protect affordable housing before investment produces displacement. It can reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways. It can strengthen schools and public transportation. It can place community ownership beside private ownership. And it can ensure that when neglected neighborhoods finally receive investment, the people who endured the neglect are not expelled by the improvement.

For the goal is not to bring the hills down.

The goal is to stop requiring the flatlands to carry the burdens that make the hills comfortable.

A just city does not demand that every neighborhood look the same. It demands that no neighborhood be designated as the place where society deposits what wealthier communities do not wish to bear.

The hills and the flatlands will remain.

But the lines between them do not have to remain walls.

They can become bridges.

And perhaps that is the great work before cities shaped by generations of exclusion: not simply to redraw the map, but to change what crossing the map means.

For when a child born in the flatlands can breathe as cleanly, learn as fully, live as securely, build wealth as fairly, and dream as freely as a child born in the hills, geography will cease to function as destiny.

Then the hills may still rise above the flatlands—
but one human life will no longer rise above another.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
August 24, 2026