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This is a very common observation in my experience, but I strongly suspect it's misplaced. My guess is that there are other factors that cause housing projects

This is a very common observation in my experience, but I strongly suspect it's misplaced. My guess is that there are other factors that cause housing projects to be "disastrous", and the correlation with superblocks is either coincidental, or - more likely - connected to institutional biases. If you look at a lot of superblocks in Nordic countries, they're extremely successful, but they also have a few not-so-great superblocks dotted here and there as well. I think there's probably examples of both to be found ("good" and "bad" superblocks) in every country, with just the ratio varying per-country. I'd be interested to see research though as the above is just anecdotal/intuition.

nihonde 9y ago
My theory, having lived in New York and Japanese cities with lots of superblock developments, is that everything depends on how well the residents maintain the site.
- lucideer 9y ago
  That's definitely a big factor but there's also a lot of others. Socioeconomics are going to influence the ability to maintain, as well as build quality, architectural considerations, &c. Local crime levels and law enforcement are going to influence residential threat models/security considerations and have positive/negative effects on residents' priorities and approaches to the maintenance of their own blocks. Provision of public amenities -vs- gated private amenities will produce different effects in different areas. QoS from building maintenance companies, the list goes on.
  - nihonde 9y ago
    My experience with these buildings in Japan is that many of the residents are either extremely low income or extremely thrifty senior citizens, or young single people away from their family unit and unable to afford more than a room for a few man yen per month--with a heavy bias toward the seniors. They have the benefit of Japan's excellent public safety network, such as local police boxes (koban) and lots of watchful eyes everywhere. There are very, very rarely going to be groups of idle men hanging around in public spaces during the day. No drug business or other illicit street activity is tolerated--it would simply stick out like a sore thumb and be handled with extreme prejudice. (Whether that's a good thing in itself is another topic for debate.) Anyway, it gives enough breathing room for the residents, many of whom are quite poor and infirm, to stay busy cleaning the grounds and keeping an eye on each other. The maintenance staff is usually one or two guys who may bring in help for landscaping or big jobs, but are usually just doing rounds and odd jobs. It is remarkable how much it operates as a self-contained unit with very meager resources and without much help from the outside. My direct experience was local (Nagoya) but it looks quite consistent in other places, at least from the outside looking in. Maybe others have a different view from places like Tokyo or Osaka.
    - lucideer 9y ago
      Really great insight. Thank you for this.
0x4f3759df 9y ago
If you would like to see a housing project deteriorate there's a documentary on Amazon Prime called 'The Pruitt Igoe Myth'. tdlr; It was low income so the rents were not sustaining the maintenance costs, and the city chose not to allocate appropriate funds to that effect (some racism was in play here).

nihonde 9y ago

My theory, having lived in New York and Japanese cities with lots of superblock developments, is that everything depends on how well the residents maintain the site.

lucideer 9y ago
That's definitely a big factor but there's also a lot of others. Socioeconomics are going to influence the ability to maintain, as well as build quality, architectural considerations, &c. Local crime levels and law enforcement are going to influence residential threat models/security considerations and have positive/negative effects on residents' priorities and approaches to the maintenance of their own blocks. Provision of public amenities -vs- gated private amenities will produce different effects in different areas. QoS from building maintenance companies, the list goes on.
- nihonde 9y ago
  My experience with these buildings in Japan is that many of the residents are either extremely low income or extremely thrifty senior citizens, or young single people away from their family unit and unable to afford more than a room for a few man yen per month--with a heavy bias toward the seniors. They have the benefit of Japan's excellent public safety network, such as local police boxes (koban) and lots of watchful eyes everywhere. There are very, very rarely going to be groups of idle men hanging around in public spaces during the day. No drug business or other illicit street activity is tolerated--it would simply stick out like a sore thumb and be handled with extreme prejudice. (Whether that's a good thing in itself is another topic for debate.) Anyway, it gives enough breathing room for the residents, many of whom are quite poor and infirm, to stay busy cleaning the grounds and keeping an eye on each other. The maintenance staff is usually one or two guys who may bring in help for landscaping or big jobs, but are usually just doing rounds and odd jobs. It is remarkable how much it operates as a self-contained unit with very meager resources and without much help from the outside. My direct experience was local (Nagoya) but it looks quite consistent in other places, at least from the outside looking in. Maybe others have a different view from places like Tokyo or Osaka.
  - lucideer 9y ago
    Really great insight. Thank you for this.

0x4f3759df 9y ago

If you would like to see a housing project deteriorate there's a documentary on Amazon Prime called 'The Pruitt Igoe Myth'. tdlr; It was low income so the rents were not sustaining the maintenance costs, and the city chose not to allocate appropriate funds to that effect (some racism was in play here).