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On your second point, the poor suffer from Modernist architecture. The projects actively bred crime, by encouraging isolation and demoralization -- Pruitt-Igoe

On your second point, the poor suffer from Modernist architecture. The projects actively bred crime, by encouraging isolation and demoralization -- Pruitt-Igoe was actually dynamited, and its inhabitants were much more peaceful and civilized after they were moved to normal housing. (And they'd been much more peaceful and civilized before being moved into Pruitt-Igoe, too.) The rich, and the prosperous upper-middle class, can live where they like and enjoy traditional architecture (look up New Traditional construction), but ordinary people are stuck with ordinary buildings, which are awful under a Modernist regime -- or under our current Postmodernist regime of cheap pull-up sheds adorned with ticky-tacky.

okreallywtf 9y ago
Interesting, do you think modernist architecture itself breeds problems or do you think the economic conditions bred the crime? I get the feeling that the architecture was used in some cases specifically to group together people that they wanted to get away from the upper and/or middle classes and consolidate together, but I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the actual architecture itself. I don't feel like we can know that until we have a more equal society or at least one where straight poverty isn't as much of an issue.
- clock_tower 9y ago
  I really do blame the architecture, not the economic conditions, which were more or less constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe. (And I certainly don't blame race, which was also constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe...) From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe), Pruitt-Igoe was a slum-clearance project, intended to provide more hygienic, healthier, cleaner, less crowded, and generally better living conditions for people who were already living in the area. The hope was that it would integrate its inhabitants better into the economy, and help everyone living there -- both black and white -- to get ahead in life. The project was actually really well racially integrated for 1950s Missouri: blacks lived in buildings named for Pruitt (a black ace pilot in WWII), whites in buildings named for Igoe (a white Congresscritter), but they were all in the same vicinity. Presumably this reflected the composition of the slums Pruitt-Igoe was replacing, since the inhabitants of the old neighborhood (called DeSoto-Carr) were moved into Pruitt-Igoe as the old buildings were torn down. (No need to pity them for being expropriated: the inhabitants didn't own the buildings, and slumlords don't deserve much sympathy.) And, strikingly enough, the initial design for the neighborhood would have been a success. High rises aren't the Devil when they're integrated into the urban fabric (otherwise present-day Manhattan would be a nightmare); Pruitt-Igoe was meant to be a mix of high-rises, mid-rises, and two- to four-storey walk-ups, until cost cutting came into play and they ended up with towers in a park. Since the same people had the same economic conditions before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe, and since they committed more crimes during Pruitt-Igoe than before or after, I think it's fair to say that the architecture, not the economic conditions, was at fault.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    I have a similar theory that bad posture causes depression.

okreallywtf 9y ago

Interesting, do you think modernist architecture itself breeds problems or do you think the economic conditions bred the crime? I get the feeling that the architecture was used in some cases specifically to group together people that they wanted to get away from the upper and/or middle classes and consolidate together, but I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the actual architecture itself. I don't feel like we can know that until we have a more equal society or at least one where straight poverty isn't as much of an issue.

clock_tower 9y ago
I really do blame the architecture, not the economic conditions, which were more or less constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe. (And I certainly don't blame race, which was also constant before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe...) From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe), Pruitt-Igoe was a slum-clearance project, intended to provide more hygienic, healthier, cleaner, less crowded, and generally better living conditions for people who were already living in the area. The hope was that it would integrate its inhabitants better into the economy, and help everyone living there -- both black and white -- to get ahead in life. The project was actually really well racially integrated for 1950s Missouri: blacks lived in buildings named for Pruitt (a black ace pilot in WWII), whites in buildings named for Igoe (a white Congresscritter), but they were all in the same vicinity. Presumably this reflected the composition of the slums Pruitt-Igoe was replacing, since the inhabitants of the old neighborhood (called DeSoto-Carr) were moved into Pruitt-Igoe as the old buildings were torn down. (No need to pity them for being expropriated: the inhabitants didn't own the buildings, and slumlords don't deserve much sympathy.) And, strikingly enough, the initial design for the neighborhood would have been a success. High rises aren't the Devil when they're integrated into the urban fabric (otherwise present-day Manhattan would be a nightmare); Pruitt-Igoe was meant to be a mix of high-rises, mid-rises, and two- to four-storey walk-ups, until cost cutting came into play and they ended up with towers in a park. Since the same people had the same economic conditions before, during, and after Pruitt-Igoe, and since they committed more crimes during Pruitt-Igoe than before or after, I think it's fair to say that the architecture, not the economic conditions, was at fault.
- sitkack 9y ago
  I have a similar theory that bad posture causes depression.