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Low income housing comes in many forms - I don't know of anyone seriously still in favor of the 70s model of low income housing that still haunt us to this day,

Low income housing comes in many forms - I don't know of anyone seriously still in favor of the 70s model of low income housing that still haunt us to this day, particularly in major cities like Chicago and NYC. There are a bajillion problems with the "garden of towers" model of low income housing (or really, just housing in general - middle and even upper income projects following that model have largely also failed, though obviously without such disastrous outcomes). Stuy Town for example is an example of this model being applied to middle and upper-middle class housing, and it has similarly failed to produce the communities they were originally intended to, and are now more known for being inaccessible and cheap than desirable in any particular way. The modern model in NYC for low income housing is to mix them in to market-priced buildings, and either subsidize the building directly or offer indirect incentives (more height limit and buildable floor area being the big one). IMO this works a lot better, and is at least closer to what Jane Jacobs IMO correctly identified as a critical element of making cities work (the geographic mixing of economic classes).

eric_h 11y ago
> Stuy Town [...is] more known for being inaccessible and cheap than desirable in any particular way The last I heard about Stuy Town a friend of mine was moving out of there because he got priced out, and he was making ~90k/year.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  Inexpensive relative to housing near it. Stuy Town is decidedly cheaper than its surrounding areas, though obviously not immune to the pricing pressures of being in Manhattan ;) There's also a pretty interesting effect of pricing within Stuy Town, where apartments towards the center of the farm of towers are substantially cheaper than apartments towards the edges of the "community". That whole area is a dead zone - its intention is to be idyllic and serene, but it's actually just sterile and unappealing, and housing is priced proportionally to how easy it is to get the fuck out of there.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    It's something to be aware of when people are all "build up, build up!" (And I know that building higher doesn't necessarily mean building true high rises but, in general, the more stories the smaller the footprint.) I've actually known people who moved into luxury high rises and ended up leaving because they found the experience too isolating and removed from the surroundings.
    - potatolicious 11y ago
      High rises come in many, many forms, and particularly how they interact with the streets below them is critically important to whether or not they work. NYC does this better than most places, but mostly by luck. Le Corbusier's Radiant City philosophy of urban design (sleek towers surrounded by idyllic parkland) gained a lot of traction in the 60s and 70s. This is why most American downtowns are wastelands - most developed under that model. It's characterized by lack of street life, lack of ground floor usages, lack of mixed use, and mechanical features that separate buildings from the city rather than integrate it (deep staircases leading to the base of the building, large setbacks from the sidewalk, etc). NYC has the benefit of predating that model, so besides the ubiquitous housing projects and some 70s-era highrises, has survived mostly intact. It's frustrating that in some American urban planning circles Le Corbusier's name is still uttered in awe instead of derision. I think his ideas have been thoroughly debunked by reality, but not everyone agrees. There's nothing inherently wrong with highrises, there's everything wrong with the prescriptive school of architecture and planning that are more concerned with fantasy scenes of tower-dwellers living idyllically in the surrounding parkland, than how people actually want to use that space.
      - ghaff 11y ago
        Fully agree. Even Boston, which is a generally walkable and mixed-use city by US standards, has its monuments to 60s/70s urban planning like the Brutalist monstrosity that is City Hall and its generally vacant windswept surrounding brick footprint. One of the problems has been that when cityscapes were planned, commercial activity has often been seen as this impure thing involving people making money on public space. While you don't want to just give developers and retail/restaurants a free ride, they have to be part of the mix or you end up with these sterile spaces that no one wants to be a part of.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  I haven't lived in Brooklyn in 20+ years. Is Stuy Town the new name for Bed-Stuy?
  - goldbrick 11y ago
    No, there are lots of things in New York named after Peter Stuyvesant. "Stuy Town" is a large private development north of the the east village that was built after WWII and supposed to be a revolutionary model of urban living, but failed to live up to the hype. Having known people who lived there, it feels like living in a housing project, but with the rent of a normal apartment. Not the best deal in the city, but it works for some.
deleted 11y ago
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eric_h 11y ago

> Stuy Town [...is] more known for being inaccessible and cheap than desirable in any particular way The last I heard about Stuy Town a friend of mine was moving out of there because he got priced out, and he was making ~90k/year.

potatolicious 11y ago
Inexpensive relative to housing near it. Stuy Town is decidedly cheaper than its surrounding areas, though obviously not immune to the pricing pressures of being in Manhattan ;) There's also a pretty interesting effect of pricing within Stuy Town, where apartments towards the center of the farm of towers are substantially cheaper than apartments towards the edges of the "community". That whole area is a dead zone - its intention is to be idyllic and serene, but it's actually just sterile and unappealing, and housing is priced proportionally to how easy it is to get the fuck out of there.
- ghaff 11y ago
  It's something to be aware of when people are all "build up, build up!" (And I know that building higher doesn't necessarily mean building true high rises but, in general, the more stories the smaller the footprint.) I've actually known people who moved into luxury high rises and ended up leaving because they found the experience too isolating and removed from the surroundings.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    High rises come in many, many forms, and particularly how they interact with the streets below them is critically important to whether or not they work. NYC does this better than most places, but mostly by luck. Le Corbusier's Radiant City philosophy of urban design (sleek towers surrounded by idyllic parkland) gained a lot of traction in the 60s and 70s. This is why most American downtowns are wastelands - most developed under that model. It's characterized by lack of street life, lack of ground floor usages, lack of mixed use, and mechanical features that separate buildings from the city rather than integrate it (deep staircases leading to the base of the building, large setbacks from the sidewalk, etc). NYC has the benefit of predating that model, so besides the ubiquitous housing projects and some 70s-era highrises, has survived mostly intact. It's frustrating that in some American urban planning circles Le Corbusier's name is still uttered in awe instead of derision. I think his ideas have been thoroughly debunked by reality, but not everyone agrees. There's nothing inherently wrong with highrises, there's everything wrong with the prescriptive school of architecture and planning that are more concerned with fantasy scenes of tower-dwellers living idyllically in the surrounding parkland, than how people actually want to use that space.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Fully agree. Even Boston, which is a generally walkable and mixed-use city by US standards, has its monuments to 60s/70s urban planning like the Brutalist monstrosity that is City Hall and its generally vacant windswept surrounding brick footprint. One of the problems has been that when cityscapes were planned, commercial activity has often been seen as this impure thing involving people making money on public space. While you don't want to just give developers and retail/restaurants a free ride, they have to be part of the mix or you end up with these sterile spaces that no one wants to be a part of.
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
I haven't lived in Brooklyn in 20+ years. Is Stuy Town the new name for Bed-Stuy?
- goldbrick 11y ago
  No, there are lots of things in New York named after Peter Stuyvesant. "Stuy Town" is a large private development north of the the east village that was built after WWII and supposed to be a revolutionary model of urban living, but failed to live up to the hype. Having known people who lived there, it feels like living in a housing project, but with the rent of a normal apartment. Not the best deal in the city, but it works for some.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]