{"id":1344,"date":"2012-06-06T08:33:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T14:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2013-06-28T10:12:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T16:12:37","slug":"revisiting-pruitt-igoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1344","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Pruitt-Igoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in November 2011 I wrote a review<\/a> of Chad Friedrichs’ film The\u00a0Pruitt-Igoe Myth<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m prompted to revisit the subject because of a very nice analysis of the film by Ray Gindroz<\/a>\u00a0 that recently appeared in Better! Cities and Towns<\/a><\/em>. Mr. Gindroz is a \u00a0man with lots of credibility given his long history and deep experience designing mixed income housing and Hope VI<\/a> projects.\u00a0 He\u2019s also been identified<\/a> as one of New Urbanism’s leaders in developing quality infill projects for\u00a0 urban cores.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pleased to see that Mr. Gindroz\u2019s \u00a0analysis of the film, including key takeaway lessons, broadly converges with mine.\u00a0 \u00a0Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s history was shaped, in Gindroz\u2019s words, by \u201cthe macro-economic and social conditions of the postwar period.\u201d\u00a0 Likewise, its demise was the\u00a0 result of a \u201cperfect storm of economic change, crushing policy decisions, and over-reaching ambition.\u201d Most importantly, Gindroz sees design and architecture as playing distinctive roles in Pruitt-Igoe’s history. \u00a0In my original review I said this about that:<\/p>\n

I certainly agree with the importance of \u2026economic and institutional forces\u2026in determining Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s fate.\u00a0 But given the importance of architecture in human affairs and, especially, its role in transforming built space into owned place\u00a0 it seems short\u2013sighted\u2014and inconsistent with any explanation that invokes \u201ccomplexity\u201d of cause\u2014to rule it out completely.\u00a0 Mention is made \u2026 throughout Friedrichs\u2019 film, of how various design elements conspired against residents\u2026. In [some] sense\u2026architecture is the most important causal factor in Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s story because it\u2019s the one variable that was always under some sort of direct human control.\u00a0 Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s architects were clearly working under strict constraints imposed by the St. Louis Housing Authority.\u00a0 But the design team consciously opted for the modernist program when other choices were available\u2026 Erring too much on the side of [economic and institutional] causality risks absolving these agents of too much responsibility\u2026Perhaps the most important lesson of Pruitt-Igoe is that we should always and everywhere see the life and death of buildings as complexly overdetermined in ways that encourage us to take greater responsibility for those things in life that we can, in fact, influence and control. Today architects are increasingly taking advantage of their power of choice \u2026to design affordable housing that\u2019s more livable and lovable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gindroz frames his own viewpoint this way:<\/p>\n

I would argue that the problems were caused in part by housing policies and in part by failures of urban design and architecture. Our profession is not helpless in the face of these issues. In fact, Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s spectacular and much-publicized failure caused all those involved with housing and cities to rethink how to provide low-income housing and how to redevelop failing parts of cities. In the years since Pruitt-Igoe came down, major reforms have been put in place. One lesson is that\u00a0 it is essential to build neighborhoods not just housing.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em>Gindroz closes his review by describing some recent efforts to “build neighborhoods” that include his own post-Katrina work at Faubourg Lafitte<\/a> in New Orleans (see also here<\/a>). \u00a0In so doing he notes another lesson still to be learned from the case of Pruitt-Igoe: “how to find the right balance between expansion of cities and reinforcement of their centers.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Faubourg-Lafitte, New Orleans<\/p><\/div>\n

Surprisingly, given the popularity of the Pruitt-Igoe story and the status of the reviewer,\u00a0Gindroz’s\u00a0Better! Cities and Towns<\/em> article<\/a> drew only two comments. But they are doozies.\u00a0 Even though the two commenters are diametrically opposed in their opinion of the film and Gindroz\u2019s review, both<\/em> \u00a0seem determined to perpetuate the myth that Friedrichs’ \u00a0film was purposely \u00a0intended to bury: that Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s disintegration was the fault of black culture and the absence of proper middle-class values.\u00a0 Commenter Ralph Bennett says (emphasis added) that:<\/p>\n

Ray makes many excellent points, including the quite correct New Urbanist criticism of superblock planning. But the real death knell for P-I came from the Brooke amendment<\/a> to the public housing law which required lowest income families to be served first, insuring over-concentration of stressed families in an environment which required supervision. The circulation arrangements of P-I didn’t work for this population,<\/strong> but remain innovative and useful for mid- and high-rise housing, in my opinion.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Commenter Alan Potkin follows up with this (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Far too much a white-guilt driven apologia for the dysfunctional and sociopathic urban underclass<\/strong>\u2026When I was a grad student at UC Berserkeley in the 1980s,<\/strong> I lived in a crapola university-owned off-campus housing complex<\/strong> –since demolished– which was too declass\u00e9 for most bourgeois Americans (it was recycled WW2 shipyard worker housing!); and so was occupied mostly by foreign student families<\/strong>, who weren’t necessarily of such elite backgrounds themselves, but they certainly had high aspirations and considerable levels of achievement…<\/strong> The place was impeccable! An absolutely identical complex<\/strong> –in architectural design, construction, units-per-acre density, land-use, and all other physical conditions– down in Alameda<\/strong> and run as, I recollect, by a public housing agency, had devolved into a vicious slum<\/strong>. Hmmmm. I wonder why that was<\/strong>?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Potkin also adds a link to a website<\/a> that apparently has, as one of its goals, to explain urban blight and failed public housing in terms of the inferior and ineluctable biology of inner city residents (i.e., blacks) compared to whites and, presumably, \u201chigh aspiring\u201d foreigners (of Asian<\/em> descent, perhaps??).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll forego rehearsing the abundant, well-evidenced arguments from anthropology<\/a> and other disciplines<\/a> demonstrating that human biology can\u2019t explain the social and geographic distribution of poverty and other human miseries. \u00a0Potkin\u2019s comparative building example is also problematic because one housing project no longer exists, the other isn\u2019t identified, and I suspect that neither can be confidently remembered in all of their important details.\u00a0 On the other hand, we do have a credible comparative touchstone for Pruitt-Igoe that implicates the relevance of architecture and design to building sustainable affordable housing. \u00a0As noted in several reviews of Friedrichs’ film the nearby Carr Square Village\u2014a low rise, lower density development with a comparable demographic makeup that was built in 1942\u2014did not suffer from the vacancy and crime that afflicted Pruitt-Igoe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Child at Pruitt-Igoe<\/p><\/div>\n

More importantly, though, I don\u2019t see how anyone can watch Friedrichs’ \u00a0film and not be impressed by the insight and intelligence of the former Pruitt-Igoe residents who were interviewed.\u00a0 These people don\u2019t strike me as members of a population that\u2019s inherently dysfunctional, or sociopathic, or in need of constant adult supervision. \u00a0I think those qualities are to be found elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in November 2011 I wrote a review of Chad Friedrichs’ film The\u00a0Pruitt-Igoe Myth.\u00a0 I\u2019m prompted to revisit the subject because of a very nice analysis of the film by Ray Gindroz\u00a0 that recently appeared in Better! Cities and Towns. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,8,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-general","category-pruitt-igoe","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-lG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1344"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2858,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344\/revisions\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}