8 ms·

Demolished: The End of Chicago's Public Housing

104 points by _nullandnull_ 12y ago

wallflower 12y ago
> To explain the troubling effect of strangers on the streets of city gray areas, I shall first point out, for purposes of analogy, the peculiarities of another and figurative kind of street - the corridors of high-rise public housing projects, those derivatives of Radiant City. The elevators and corridors of these projects are, in a sense, streets. They are streets piled up in the sky in order to eliminate streets on the ground and permit the ground to become deserted parks like the mall at Washington Houses where the tree was stolen. Not only are these interior parts of the building streets in the sense that they serve the comings and goings of residents, most of whom may not know each other or recognize, necessarily, who is a resident and who is not. They are streets also in the sense of being accessible to the public. They have been designed in an imitation of upper-class standards for apartment living without upper-class cash for doormen and elevator men. Anyone at all can go into these buildings, unquestioned, and use the traveling street of the elevator and the sidewalks that are the corridors. These interior streets, although completely accessible to public use, are closed to public view and thus lack the checks and inhibitions exerted by eye-policed city streets. From "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Chapter 2: "The uses of sidewalks: safety", Jane Jacobs
- mc32 12y ago
  Jane Jacob's book is an essential and phenomenal read for anyone who feels unease with how cities have not provided us with more inviting living spaces --due to many reasons, politics, economics, architects, residents, etc. Sometimes I would like to see a comparison between Council Estates in the UK and Section 8 housing in the US. as well we the estates in Eastern Europe to see if the experiences are similar or, if there are differences, why/
  - agilebyte 12y ago
    I feel like since people in UK pride themselves on living in a house and not an apartment building, you end up with a similar segregation like in US along social strata. I grew up in a concrete panel building in then Czechoslovakia and since the population was mixed, it was all fine. These days, some of these buildings have turned into ghettos due to failed/racist social policies[1]. [1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=sidliste+chanov&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=sidliste+chanov&tbm=isch
    - mc32 12y ago
      Thanks, that's quite interesting. I think Brazil tried 'singaporising' some flavelas (move people into Singapore style high rises) but many of the people who moved in did not take well to the new environment --it was too removed from what they were used to. Also failed housing projects in the outer sections of Paris (outer arrondissements). They also developed into segregated ghettoes. But it's interesting to see that if everyone is in the same boat --i.e. that's the only kind of housing stock there is, then people can make it work, even if it kind of looks drab and unimaginative from the outside.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  One of the nastier bits about the construction of America's old public housing stock was that when they built it in those neighborhoods which were considered slums, replacing a lot of small individual properties with big state-owned properties. Huddled masses yearning to breath free? Sure. But in this transition, they mangled a lot of the informal economy -- good old-fashioned under-the-table businesses operating out of privately-rented homes, gleefully ignoring all regulations it feels like, and the source of livelihood for many urban poor. Obviously, this was no boon to the future of the community.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - davideads 12y ago
    Absolutely. When I worked at Stateway Gardens in the 2000s, people would try to set up little businesses in the grassy spaces and were invariably shut down quickly by the police even while drugs were being sold openly 50 yards away.
- superuser2 12y ago
  Various access control projects were undertaken throughout the life of the housing projects - signing in with an attendant, punching codes, swiping cards, etc. In every case the residents objected vigorously and the systems were all either vandalized or removed. The housing authority eventually gave up. I unfortunately don't have a published source for this, but it's from a family member who was a social work professor in Chicago during that period.
monksy 12y ago
Cabrini Green will not be missed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green
- bbarn 12y ago
  I remember a different history, and I don't miss those awful towers a bit. I remember being in military uniform in the early 90's and still being harassed by the locals as I walked down Division St the 3 miles to the train I had to get to. I remember everyone I knew, black, white, well off, poor.. all of them hating being around those things. I remember the other set further up north (that still exist, and I'm not sure if they were "renovated") just two years ago when I lived nearby, and the crime that centered around it. I also can't provide any sort of evidence to this, but I strongly remember an idea that these were only ever intended to be stopping points - temporary housing, and the problem being them becoming "homes" at all. No "Home" in this country should resemble a prison cell as much as those did. Complete with block wardens, cages to prevent violence or suicide on porches, etc. To that end, is it really a bad statistic when you see that 44% that weren't in the system 10 years later? The single biggest bucket if you lumped "no longer qualified", "lost contact", and "private market" would be almost 30% ten years later don't need to be in there anymore. Add in the other 35% that are in mixed rentals (a la the questionably effective Wilson Yard development), or just accepting a subsidized rental, I'd say that the bulk of the community - those who lived there as well as those who lived around there, are doing better without those terrible towers.
  - monksy 12y ago
    I was not here when it still existed. However, I have heard stories of: 1. Cops getting shot for being in the area 2. It being run by gangs 3. Airline shuttle being shot at. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/0107310193_1_crew-members-continental-airlines-bus http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/010731019... Crap, I've been to that hospital they were transported to) If this article is trying to make me feel bad that Cabrini Green was shut down, I consider the author and the individuals who put it on the site completely lacking in any credibility.
rjurney 12y ago
In college I lived in a mixed income development in Atlanta that replaced Techwood Homes, a notorious project. It was pretty cool. The two-rent-level system seemed to work well. http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/ http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/
- GabrielF00 12y ago
  This was part of a HUD program called HOPE VI, which replaced really bad housing projects with townhouse-style, privately-managed, mixed-income housing. At least here in Boston it seems to have been very successful.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Techwood Homes, the first public housing of that type in the US, was still there when I was at Ga Tech. For the most part there was little interaction between the residents there and Tech students, even though it was literally just across the street. Guys selling weed or a mugging now and then on that side of North Ave. was about the most that ever happened. There was also one old Tech dorm building on that side of the street, separated from campus. On paper it was the least appealing dorm - old, poor facilities and a proximity to crime. In practice, many of the student who lived there did so by choice, as kind of a mild misfit/artistic community. People were always doing interesting things in their dormrooms there. My mom and stepdad owned a mechanical engineering firm that did a lot of work in Atlanta housing projects. Mostly replacing old metal gaslines with plastic ones. Me, my brother, and one of my stepbrothers all worked for them at various points, so we all got a fair amount of experience in the Atlanta projects. My stepdad always made sure each crew had a couple guys from whatever project we were at, which was a good practical step. Otherwise we'd have been a bunch of white guys (mostly really redneck construction dudes) in all-black projects. We rarely had much trouble, beyond some petty theft of our tools, and one doofus on the crew who followed someone into a basement to "buy a cheap TV" and got robbed at shotgun point as a result. I didn't do the job at Techwood, but my brother did, and one day there was a gun fight in the street. The crew all ran and hid in doorways and behind steps. My brother said he saw one of the teens who was shooting crouched behind a car door, and the guy looked at him and grinned like he was having a great time, then went back to shooting. In retrospect, it's kinda crazy our mom let us work there, but we never really told her those kind of stories. Heh.
sixQuarks 12y ago
The story was good, but I was intrigued by the format of the "article". It really catered to today's attention deficit society, in a good way. It pulled me in and I read all the way through. Normally, I would be too impatient to do so. I hope this format evolves for long-form articles, we need a change on the web.
- vegabook 12y ago
  I agree with this as I had the same experience. Somehow the use of black-and-white photography with a single colour text highlight helps to focus on the story, piece by piece. Also the placing of text in a semi-transparent magenta box right in the middle of the screen, rather than to the side as one might expect in a magazine. All works really well. I'm also a fan of the side-scrolling aspect. Somehow that has more of a linear time dimension to it than vertical scrolling.
- davideads 12y ago
  Thanks! I'm the author of the story. The NPR Visuals team works really hard to make stuff that is substantial but that people still want to read online. Obviously we're still learning and have a long way to go, but I share your hope and we'd love your feedback on how to make it better. A goal is to figure out how to do long form using some of these techniques. For what it's worth the code that drives the story is open source: http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/ http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    thanks for the github link.
rayiner 12y ago
When Cabrini Green came down, I remember seeing a bunch of articles about public housing, which portrayed these high-rise projects as an outgrowth of the optimistic attitude of the time. There's a strong cognitive dissonance there, because the projects were just as much an outgrowth of the powerful segregationist attitude that also characterized the era. I'm quite excited to see the move to what will hopefully be more integrationist attempts at public housing. I really like the idea of Section 8 (we had Section 8 buildings in Streeterville where I lived in Chicago) and would love to see it extended to wealthy suburban neighborhoods.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  Those stories were largely revisionist history. At the time the large Chicago high rise public housing were built (Cabrini and the Robert Taylor Homes) it was pretty common knowledge that it was a bad idea to build large segregated high rises for this purpose. There was lots of opposition to the plans by urban planners and housing experts. These large homes, the Chicago interstate system, and the placement of UIC were all outgrowths of the segregationist and the cynical political climate of the time, much more so than any optimistic belief in the future. [edit] Blueprint for Disaster was a pretty good book that covered this topic.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    The interstate system in many cities had those harmful effects. Certainly, down the road in St. Louis, the placement of I-44 and I-70 destroyed neighborhoods and business districts in a fashion that was both completely avoidable and motivated by racism.
brandnewlow 12y ago
I lived in Atrium Village, the mixed income development 2 blocks from Cabrini Green, from 2008-2012. It was designed to be transition housing for people working to get out of Cabrini Green. The high rises were empty and coming down by the time i moved in, but the low-rises were still mostly inhabited. They were just awful places. Cinder block cells. Cabrini Green was interesting to me as an armchair urban planner because it was surrounded by affluence. The main drag dumped right into a luxury car garage. And the whole thing was about 100 feet from Groupon's headquarters. When Groupon employees would step outside on smoke breaks, they faced a view directly down into Cabrini Green. Very bizarre to have all that wealth created so near a place without any.
brandnewlow 12y ago
The article mentions that many of the people that "went missing" headed out to the suburbs. If you're curious about that, read up on Markham, Illinois, one of the towns that's picked up a lot of the public housing people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois In journalism school I was assigned to cover happenings at the Markham Courthouse, which often led me out to Markham proper. As a middle class white guy raised in a white suburban small town, the 3 months I spent there were an eye-opening experience. Most people I talked to had a shooting story or knew someone who had one. There was also little confidence in local government as many believed that Markham was run by former criminals who'd managed to win office. At the time, there were two reporters at a newspaper called the Southtown Daily Star who covered the numerous claims of police wrongdoing and general violence in Markham. The Star's parent company, the Chicago Sun-Times, hit the skids soon after and killed the Southtown. I don't know if anyone's reporting on Markham these days.
mjfl 12y ago
All this crime and misery, stemming from a simple enough plan to give people affordable housing...
- NegativeK 12y ago
  Stemming from a plan to give people affordable housing and keep them where they won't be seen.
_nullandnull_ 12y ago
"Bauhaus blunders: architecture and public housing" is also worth reading [1]. I studied modern art history for a while and I always found it fascinating how designers could create something so horrible as the "projects". 1. http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-blunders-architecture-and-public-housing http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-bl...
aosmith 12y ago
Chicago is my home and this was a mixed blessing for the city. When we destroyed projects we created many small pockets of "section 8". This introduced danger into otherwise nice neighborhoods. I live in wicker park and I've had people try to rob me at gun/knife twice as a result of public housing. It's an unfair burden on the residents.
- techsupporter 12y ago
  Where should they go to not be an unfair burden?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Cluster then in a single, easily avoided neighborhood. Its one thing to ask productive people to give up their income to support the unproductive - its another to ask them to be victims of violence.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      That's a reasonable description of a prison.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        A prison is a place you are not allowed to leave. In contrast, I encourage everyone in public housing to find a job and leave.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        Is it just received wisdom that Cluster then in a single, easily avoided neighborhood [that is apparently violent] is the best way to accomplish everyone in public housing to find a job and leave?
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
scotty79 12y ago
Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe at least in 90% of cases when care is taken so that percentage of poor and criminal residents do not exceed some crtical value. The buildings themselves should also be kept small and hallways short to prevent them from becoming streets. Lots of trees, paths, playgrounds and small commerce between buildings seem to help.
- design-of-homes 12y ago
  "Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe..." Does it? What's happened in Chicago has many parallels with public housing projects in (some) European countries. There was a boom in large scale public housing developments in many European countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these housing developments were large monolitic blocks. Some random examples: - Droixhe in Liege, Belgium http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg. - The Aylesbury estate in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg. - Chêne Pointu in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/ Many public housing developments were not stitched into the fabric of the city, but set apart from surrounding towns or city centres. The architects who built these blocks had the best of intentions (although some also had strong ideological views that influenced their designs). But today, we recognise that this style of overscaled, monolitic block design was a mistake. In the UK, the era of large scale mass public housing was largely over by the 1970s, but their effects linger on today in our attitudes to public housing and housing development. Despite the run-down nature of many estates, strong social ties developed among residents. When estates are marked for regeneration, those ties are often broken as people are re-housed and dispersed. What does community even mean nowadays in cities when housing is snapped up by absentee investors and buy-to-let landlords with no interest in their neighbours or the neigbourhood?
  - scotty79 12y ago
    Occasionally it goes bad but I feel I left plenty of padding by claiming 90% of time it works in Europe. This kinds of buildings don't necessarily need to be public projects. There are a lot of private investments like that. And it works. It provides plenty of green spaces that make living pleasent while providing extraordinary privacy. You can easily live there for a decade without as much as knowing a name of any of your thousand neighbours or faces of more than 5 of them. People comming from smaller communities often value this newfound privacy and freedom to pick people to interact with. It allows for proximity to public transportation. You are never farther than 10 minutes walk from a vehicle that can take you anywhere in the city. It really works. You just have to design it for working people and their families that keep to themselves. Don't build too large, leave plenty of space and set up the rates so that not too many troubling people can afford that.
percept 12y ago
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X/ http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp... This is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes. The author contributed to the drug dealer economics portion of _Freakonomics_.
sinemetu11 12y ago
To me what's baffling about stories like this is that there are so many people that are blind to the fact that this even happens. This was 50k+ people, yet there are so many that think if you "just work hard" then you won't need to be given help or better opportunities. What's supposed to happen when these opportunities are taken away? Providing legitimate services to people is a win for everyone not just the people that are utilizing them.

104 points by _nullandnull_ 12y ago

> To explain the troubling effect of strangers on the streets of city gray areas, I shall first point out, for purposes of analogy, the peculiarities of another and figurative kind of street - the corridors of high-rise public housing projects, those derivatives of Radiant City. The elevators and corridors of these projects are, in a sense, streets. They are streets piled up in the sky in order to eliminate streets on the ground and permit the ground to become deserted parks like the mall at Washington Houses where the tree was stolen. Not only are these interior parts of the building streets in the sense that they serve the comings and goings of residents, most of whom may not know each other or recognize, necessarily, who is a resident and who is not. They are streets also in the sense of being accessible to the public. They have been designed in an imitation of upper-class standards for apartment living without upper-class cash for doormen and elevator men. Anyone at all can go into these buildings, unquestioned, and use the traveling street of the elevator and the sidewalks that are the corridors. These interior streets, although completely accessible to public use, are closed to public view and thus lack the checks and inhibitions exerted by eye-policed city streets. From "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Chapter 2: "The uses of sidewalks: safety", Jane Jacobs

mc32 12y ago
Jane Jacob's book is an essential and phenomenal read for anyone who feels unease with how cities have not provided us with more inviting living spaces --due to many reasons, politics, economics, architects, residents, etc. Sometimes I would like to see a comparison between Council Estates in the UK and Section 8 housing in the US. as well we the estates in Eastern Europe to see if the experiences are similar or, if there are differences, why/
- agilebyte 12y ago
  I feel like since people in UK pride themselves on living in a house and not an apartment building, you end up with a similar segregation like in US along social strata. I grew up in a concrete panel building in then Czechoslovakia and since the population was mixed, it was all fine. These days, some of these buildings have turned into ghettos due to failed/racist social policies[1]. [1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=sidliste+chanov&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=sidliste+chanov&tbm=isch
  - mc32 12y ago
    Thanks, that's quite interesting. I think Brazil tried 'singaporising' some flavelas (move people into Singapore style high rises) but many of the people who moved in did not take well to the new environment --it was too removed from what they were used to. Also failed housing projects in the outer sections of Paris (outer arrondissements). They also developed into segregated ghettoes. But it's interesting to see that if everyone is in the same boat --i.e. that's the only kind of housing stock there is, then people can make it work, even if it kind of looks drab and unimaginative from the outside.
fennecfoxen 12y ago
One of the nastier bits about the construction of America's old public housing stock was that when they built it in those neighborhoods which were considered slums, replacing a lot of small individual properties with big state-owned properties. Huddled masses yearning to breath free? Sure. But in this transition, they mangled a lot of the informal economy -- good old-fashioned under-the-table businesses operating out of privately-rented homes, gleefully ignoring all regulations it feels like, and the source of livelihood for many urban poor. Obviously, this was no boon to the future of the community.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- davideads 12y ago
  Absolutely. When I worked at Stateway Gardens in the 2000s, people would try to set up little businesses in the grassy spaces and were invariably shut down quickly by the police even while drugs were being sold openly 50 yards away.
superuser2 12y ago
Various access control projects were undertaken throughout the life of the housing projects - signing in with an attendant, punching codes, swiping cards, etc. In every case the residents objected vigorously and the systems were all either vandalized or removed. The housing authority eventually gave up. I unfortunately don't have a published source for this, but it's from a family member who was a social work professor in Chicago during that period.

monksy 12y ago

Cabrini Green will not be missed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green

bbarn 12y ago
I remember a different history, and I don't miss those awful towers a bit. I remember being in military uniform in the early 90's and still being harassed by the locals as I walked down Division St the 3 miles to the train I had to get to. I remember everyone I knew, black, white, well off, poor.. all of them hating being around those things. I remember the other set further up north (that still exist, and I'm not sure if they were "renovated") just two years ago when I lived nearby, and the crime that centered around it. I also can't provide any sort of evidence to this, but I strongly remember an idea that these were only ever intended to be stopping points - temporary housing, and the problem being them becoming "homes" at all. No "Home" in this country should resemble a prison cell as much as those did. Complete with block wardens, cages to prevent violence or suicide on porches, etc. To that end, is it really a bad statistic when you see that 44% that weren't in the system 10 years later? The single biggest bucket if you lumped "no longer qualified", "lost contact", and "private market" would be almost 30% ten years later don't need to be in there anymore. Add in the other 35% that are in mixed rentals (a la the questionably effective Wilson Yard development), or just accepting a subsidized rental, I'd say that the bulk of the community - those who lived there as well as those who lived around there, are doing better without those terrible towers.
- monksy 12y ago
  I was not here when it still existed. However, I have heard stories of: 1. Cops getting shot for being in the area 2. It being run by gangs 3. Airline shuttle being shot at. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/0107310193_1_crew-members-continental-airlines-bus http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-07-31/news/010731019... Crap, I've been to that hospital they were transported to) If this article is trying to make me feel bad that Cabrini Green was shut down, I consider the author and the individuals who put it on the site completely lacking in any credibility.

rjurney 12y ago

In college I lived in a mixed income development in Atlanta that replaced Techwood Homes, a notorious project. It was pretty cool. The two-rent-level system seemed to work well. http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/ http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/

GabrielF00 12y ago
This was part of a HUD program called HOPE VI, which replaced really bad housing projects with townhouse-style, privately-managed, mixed-income housing. At least here in Boston it seems to have been very successful.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
Techwood Homes, the first public housing of that type in the US, was still there when I was at Ga Tech. For the most part there was little interaction between the residents there and Tech students, even though it was literally just across the street. Guys selling weed or a mugging now and then on that side of North Ave. was about the most that ever happened. There was also one old Tech dorm building on that side of the street, separated from campus. On paper it was the least appealing dorm - old, poor facilities and a proximity to crime. In practice, many of the student who lived there did so by choice, as kind of a mild misfit/artistic community. People were always doing interesting things in their dormrooms there. My mom and stepdad owned a mechanical engineering firm that did a lot of work in Atlanta housing projects. Mostly replacing old metal gaslines with plastic ones. Me, my brother, and one of my stepbrothers all worked for them at various points, so we all got a fair amount of experience in the Atlanta projects. My stepdad always made sure each crew had a couple guys from whatever project we were at, which was a good practical step. Otherwise we'd have been a bunch of white guys (mostly really redneck construction dudes) in all-black projects. We rarely had much trouble, beyond some petty theft of our tools, and one doofus on the crew who followed someone into a basement to "buy a cheap TV" and got robbed at shotgun point as a result. I didn't do the job at Techwood, but my brother did, and one day there was a gun fight in the street. The crew all ran and hid in doorways and behind steps. My brother said he saw one of the teens who was shooting crouched behind a car door, and the guy looked at him and grinned like he was having a great time, then went back to shooting. In retrospect, it's kinda crazy our mom let us work there, but we never really told her those kind of stories. Heh.

sixQuarks 12y ago

The story was good, but I was intrigued by the format of the "article". It really catered to today's attention deficit society, in a good way. It pulled me in and I read all the way through. Normally, I would be too impatient to do so. I hope this format evolves for long-form articles, we need a change on the web.

vegabook 12y ago
I agree with this as I had the same experience. Somehow the use of black-and-white photography with a single colour text highlight helps to focus on the story, piece by piece. Also the placing of text in a semi-transparent magenta box right in the middle of the screen, rather than to the side as one might expect in a magazine. All works really well. I'm also a fan of the side-scrolling aspect. Somehow that has more of a linear time dimension to it than vertical scrolling.
davideads 12y ago
Thanks! I'm the author of the story. The NPR Visuals team works really hard to make stuff that is substantial but that people still want to read online. Obviously we're still learning and have a long way to go, but I share your hope and we'd love your feedback on how to make it better. A goal is to figure out how to do long form using some of these techniques. For what it's worth the code that drives the story is open source: http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/ http://github.com/nprapps/lookatthis/
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  thanks for the github link.

rayiner 12y ago

When Cabrini Green came down, I remember seeing a bunch of articles about public housing, which portrayed these high-rise projects as an outgrowth of the optimistic attitude of the time. There's a strong cognitive dissonance there, because the projects were just as much an outgrowth of the powerful segregationist attitude that also characterized the era. I'm quite excited to see the move to what will hopefully be more integrationist attempts at public housing. I really like the idea of Section 8 (we had Section 8 buildings in Streeterville where I lived in Chicago) and would love to see it extended to wealthy suburban neighborhoods.

kasey_junk 12y ago
Those stories were largely revisionist history. At the time the large Chicago high rise public housing were built (Cabrini and the Robert Taylor Homes) it was pretty common knowledge that it was a bad idea to build large segregated high rises for this purpose. There was lots of opposition to the plans by urban planners and housing experts. These large homes, the Chicago interstate system, and the placement of UIC were all outgrowths of the segregationist and the cynical political climate of the time, much more so than any optimistic belief in the future. [edit] Blueprint for Disaster was a pretty good book that covered this topic.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  The interstate system in many cities had those harmful effects. Certainly, down the road in St. Louis, the placement of I-44 and I-70 destroyed neighborhoods and business districts in a fashion that was both completely avoidable and motivated by racism.

brandnewlow 12y ago

I lived in Atrium Village, the mixed income development 2 blocks from Cabrini Green, from 2008-2012. It was designed to be transition housing for people working to get out of Cabrini Green. The high rises were empty and coming down by the time i moved in, but the low-rises were still mostly inhabited. They were just awful places. Cinder block cells. Cabrini Green was interesting to me as an armchair urban planner because it was surrounded by affluence. The main drag dumped right into a luxury car garage. And the whole thing was about 100 feet from Groupon's headquarters. When Groupon employees would step outside on smoke breaks, they faced a view directly down into Cabrini Green. Very bizarre to have all that wealth created so near a place without any.

brandnewlow 12y ago

The article mentions that many of the people that "went missing" headed out to the suburbs. If you're curious about that, read up on Markham, Illinois, one of the towns that's picked up a lot of the public housing people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Illinois In journalism school I was assigned to cover happenings at the Markham Courthouse, which often led me out to Markham proper. As a middle class white guy raised in a white suburban small town, the 3 months I spent there were an eye-opening experience. Most people I talked to had a shooting story or knew someone who had one. There was also little confidence in local government as many believed that Markham was run by former criminals who'd managed to win office. At the time, there were two reporters at a newspaper called the Southtown Daily Star who covered the numerous claims of police wrongdoing and general violence in Markham. The Star's parent company, the Chicago Sun-Times, hit the skids soon after and killed the Southtown. I don't know if anyone's reporting on Markham these days.

mjfl 12y ago

All this crime and misery, stemming from a simple enough plan to give people affordable housing...

NegativeK 12y ago
Stemming from a plan to give people affordable housing and keep them where they won't be seen.

_nullandnull_ 12y ago

"Bauhaus blunders: architecture and public housing" is also worth reading [1]. I studied modern art history for a while and I always found it fascinating how designers could create something so horrible as the "projects". 1. http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-blunders-architecture-and-public-housing http://nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/bauhaus-bl...

aosmith 12y ago

Chicago is my home and this was a mixed blessing for the city. When we destroyed projects we created many small pockets of "section 8". This introduced danger into otherwise nice neighborhoods. I live in wicker park and I've had people try to rob me at gun/knife twice as a result of public housing. It's an unfair burden on the residents.

techsupporter 12y ago
Where should they go to not be an unfair burden?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Cluster then in a single, easily avoided neighborhood. Its one thing to ask productive people to give up their income to support the unproductive - its another to ask them to be victims of violence.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    That's a reasonable description of a prison.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      A prison is a place you are not allowed to leave. In contrast, I encourage everyone in public housing to find a job and leave.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Is it just received wisdom that Cluster then in a single, easily avoided neighborhood [that is apparently violent] is the best way to accomplish everyone in public housing to find a job and leave?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

scotty79 12y ago

Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe at least in 90% of cases when care is taken so that percentage of poor and criminal residents do not exceed some crtical value. The buildings themselves should also be kept small and hallways short to prevent them from becoming streets. Lots of trees, paths, playgrounds and small commerce between buildings seem to help.

design-of-homes 12y ago
"Funny how this kinds of housing works perfectly in Europe..." Does it? What's happened in Chicago has many parallels with public housing projects in (some) European countries. There was a boom in large scale public housing developments in many European countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these housing developments were large monolitic blocks. Some random examples: - Droixhe in Liege, Belgium http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg. - The Aylesbury estate in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg. - Chêne Pointu in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/ Many public housing developments were not stitched into the fabric of the city, but set apart from surrounding towns or city centres. The architects who built these blocks had the best of intentions (although some also had strong ideological views that influenced their designs). But today, we recognise that this style of overscaled, monolitic block design was a mistake. In the UK, the era of large scale mass public housing was largely over by the 1970s, but their effects linger on today in our attitudes to public housing and housing development. Despite the run-down nature of many estates, strong social ties developed among residents. When estates are marked for regeneration, those ties are often broken as people are re-housed and dispersed. What does community even mean nowadays in cities when housing is snapped up by absentee investors and buy-to-let landlords with no interest in their neighbours or the neigbourhood?
- scotty79 12y ago
  Occasionally it goes bad but I feel I left plenty of padding by claiming 90% of time it works in Europe. This kinds of buildings don't necessarily need to be public projects. There are a lot of private investments like that. And it works. It provides plenty of green spaces that make living pleasent while providing extraordinary privacy. You can easily live there for a decade without as much as knowing a name of any of your thousand neighbours or faces of more than 5 of them. People comming from smaller communities often value this newfound privacy and freedom to pick people to interact with. It allows for proximity to public transportation. You are never farther than 10 minutes walk from a vehicle that can take you anywhere in the city. It really works. You just have to design it for working people and their families that keep to themselves. Don't build too large, leave plenty of space and set up the rates so that not too many troubling people can afford that.

percept 12y ago

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X/ http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp... This is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes. The author contributed to the drug dealer economics portion of _Freakonomics_.

sinemetu11 12y ago

To me what's baffling about stories like this is that there are so many people that are blind to the fact that this even happens. This was 50k+ people, yet there are so many that think if you "just work hard" then you won't need to be given help or better opportunities. What's supposed to happen when these opportunities are taken away? Providing legitimate services to people is a win for everyone not just the people that are utilizing them.