The objective of this study is to develop a geographic explanation for residential disinvestment. The literature of traditional urban socio-economic research offers an individualistic, disaggregate account of this phenomenon, but the findings are confusing and incomplete. In part, this is because rational economic choice and consumer demand are insufficient to explain spatial disparities in financing within an urban area. In addition there is little research linking consumer demand and socio-economic factors with housing and finance variables and processes.

To fill this void a geographical analysis of the pattern of residential mortgage lending was performed for the metropolitan Oklahoma City area. The principal findings of this study are the following: First, disinvestment is a more complex spatial aspect of redlining, the elements of which cannot be explained adequately simply in terms of an urban-suburban typology; second, a more comprehensive explanation of disinvestment is offered which synthesizes and integrates the demand and supply factors within a theoretical framework derived from orthodox and critical theory, and; third, the theoretical discussion is the first explicit geographical account of disinvestment. A geographic model is proposed which solicits some variables connecting personal factors with public and private housing-finance institutional behavior.