Standards Versus Struggle: The Failure of Public Housing and the Welfare-State Impulse

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
Howard Husock
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Lake Michigan ◽  
Smoke Inhalation ◽  
Murder Rate ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Deferred Maintenance ◽  
State Street ◽  
The City

In considering the development and course of the American welfare state, there are some places which are better starting points than others. One such place is the State Street corridor, the series of high-rise Chicago Housing Authority public-housing projects which loom over Lake Michigan. Most Chicagoans, like their counterparts in other cities, have become inured to conditions there: a murder rate far in excess of that of the city as a whole, a society of unemployed single mothers, deferred maintenance that makes stairwells, plazas, and elevators places of danger. Author Alex Kotlowitz decribes the situation of a mother of two boys in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes: “She lived in daily fear that something might happen to her young ones.… Already that year, 57 children had been killed in the city, five in the Horner area, including two, aged eight and six, who died from smoke inhalation when firefighters had to climb the 14 stories to their apartment. Both of the building's elevators were broken.”

scholarly journals Income Inequality and Socio-economic Segregation in the City of Johannesburg

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Richard Ballard ◽  
Christian Hamann
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Economic Segregation ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Paradoxical Finding ◽  
The City ◽  
White Suburbs

AbstractThis chapter analyses income inequality and socio-economic segregation in South Africa’s most populous city, Johannesburg. The end of apartheid’s segregation in 1991 has been followed by both continuity and change of urban spatial patterns. There is a considerable literature on the transformation of inner-city areas from white to black, and of the steady diffusion of black middle-class residents into once ‘white’ suburbs. There has been less analysis on the nature and pace of socio-economic mixing. Four key findings from this chapter are as follows. First, dissimilarity indices show that bottom occupation categories and the unemployed are highly segregated from top occupation categories, but that the degree of segregation has decreased slightly between the censuses of 2001 and 2011. Second, the data quantifies the way in which Johannesburg’s large population of unemployed people are more segregated from top occupations than any of the other employment categories, although unemployed people are less segregated from bottom occupations. Third, over the same period, residents employed in bottom occupations are less likely to be represented in affluent former white suburbs. This seemingly paradoxical finding is likely to have resulted from fewer affluent households accommodating their domestic workers on their properties. Fourth, although most post-apartheid public housing projects have not disrupted patterns of socio-economic segregation, some important exceptions do show the enormous capacity of public housing to transform the spatial structure of the city.

scholarly journals The role of residential fabric in the configuration of the city in Spain in the 1940s and 1950s. The case of Jaca

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raimundo Bambó Naya
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Local Experience ◽  
Architectural Language ◽  
City Structure ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

The housing problem was one of the fundamental concerns of the new State that emerged after the Civil War in Spain. Different official bodies were created to this end, facing the need for reconstruction of different cities and villages and the dwelling shortage. During the 1940s and 1950s there was a progressive shift of interest from rural housing to urban housing. A series of residential projects of different nature were developed in towns and cities, modifying their urban configuration. The objective of this work is to study different public housing projects carried out during the 1940s and 1950s in the city of Jaca by Lorenzo Monclús, municipal architect of the city, regional delegate of the National Housing Institute and urban planning technician. On the one hand, the study focuses on the theoretical models and international references on which they are based, the building types, the architectural language, and the design of the urban space. On the other hand, on the adaptability of these models to the existing city structure and its planning: a 1917 extension project according to nineteenth century models, carried out after the demolition of the city walls, and revised on successive occasions during the studied period. This analysis of a local experience is part of a wider debate: that of the urban culture in Spain during the postwar period. Despite all the limitations, modern functionalist urbanism was assimilated through public housing projects and urban extensions with open edification in smaller settlements, with techniques akin to those used in larger cities throughout the country.

the sudden flickerings of hand to mouth and expulsions of breath that fill the car with smoke as his mind fights what will happen when we get there. Worry Dolls I laugh at your funny hairband with its crude, bright thread-dolls tacked to a coarse, purple ribbon. ‘You tell each doll one worry at night and it helps—a little,’ you explain, laughing back. It seems to me a talisman that must come from your Costa Rican life, invested with some jungle peoples’ folklore for healing, but dates, you say, from a day of ‘retail therapy’ at a shopping mall near Rancocas Valley Hospital. Trust you to transcend the banal with the potent and magical. We wore each other out with sleep deprivation this visit, playing worry dolls until that dead time when it is quiet even on West Holly Avenue, - and it helped. And now you are back in Shy Town asking why visits have to mean a week of tired, and I am still here in limbo between worlds smiling at the bit of magic you take with you, and leave behind; and I remember us laughing, with some unease in our amazement, at my story of the old woman in her Sunday coat who spoke my thoughts out loud that day under the ‘L’ when I too inhabited the strange world you live in now: ‘I don’t like State Street.’ ‘I just don’t like State Street.’ Too much voodoo on State Street.’ I think of you there, a bird of paradise in a high-rise cage, cycling on your mountain bike after dark among demons of the city, and I send you some magic in return—some good voodoo vibes to balance the odds, to make you smile,

2005 ◽  
pp. 82-82
Keyword(s):  
Sleep Deprivation ◽  
Dead Time ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Mountain Bike ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Hospital Trust ◽  
State Street ◽  
The City

Deindustrialization and the Changing Spatial Structure of Hong Kong, China

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paavo Monkkonen
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Central Cities ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
New Towns ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The City

Deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy have altered the urban landscape in many countries, and are generally associated with redevelopment in central cities and gentrification. This paper examines the spatial dimension of the transformation of the economic geography of Hong Kong at the turn of the 21st century, asking specifically how the relative centralization of employment and steepening of the bid rent curve has affected the residential location of different income groups. The Hong Kong case is noteworthy due to the speed of deindustrialization, the centralization of employment during this time period, and extensive urban growth due in part to the construction of public housing projects in outlying new towns. The paper describes changes in the distribution of jobs over space and sectors from 1986 to 2006, and analyzes the changes by distance to city center and at the neighborhood level using census, geographic, and administrative data for 150 neighborhoods. Wealth is found to be centralized though this centralization has declined. This decline stems more from an increase in incomes in outlying areas, however, than from a change in incomes in central parts of the city. Public housing plays an important role in limiting income change, as residents of public housing move infrequently, and government investments do not have a significant impact on neighborhood change at the scale measured. The implications for Chinese cities are explored in the conclusion.

scholarly journals Verticality and Conflicting Identities in the Contemporary Chinese City: The Urban Development of Suzhou Industrial Park

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Raffaele Pernice
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Industrial Park ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Residential Communities ◽  
The City

The unprecedented pace of urbanization and modernization of China in the last three decades has led to a huge restructuring of the pre-existent urban fabrics and the progressive reshaping of the city form, its inner structure and urban landscape, by promoting the growth of many new high-rise residential superblocks and suburban commercial, industrial, and business districts built around major Chinese cities. Famous for the UNESCO protected urban gardens, Suzhou has over 2,500 years of history. Like in many Chinese cities, the low-rise urban landscape of the old city clashes visually with the verticality of the contemporary built environment, especially evident in the new residential urban zones of Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). Focusing on four selected case studies of large-scale housing projects in SIP, the paper explores how these new residential communities have engaged the themes of verticality and high-density living to create extensive constellations of modern but uniform high-rise urban communities. It also considers how and comment about the contradictions within this acontextual modern urban landscape, which mirror to some extent a larger trend in Chinese and other East Asian cities, in a phase of exceptional urban development and economic growth at the turn of the 21st century.

scholarly journals Re-Inventing Public Housing

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Biehle ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
One Step ◽  
Public Housing Estate ◽  
The City

In Public Housing that Worked Nicholas Bloom championed the success of the New York City Housing Authority, but to do so had to champion bureaucratic workability over architectural value. In fact, his assessment had to disregard the fact that nearly all of the high-rise low-income housing projects are psychologically partitioned island wastelands, anticities within the city. Louis Wirth, Jane Jacobs and now Steven Johnson have offered their generational testaments to density, diversity, mixed use, and continuity- what they considered made urban life meaningful. Steven Connsummarized- “the problem of the 21st century will be how we re-urbanize, how we fix the mistakes of our anti-urban 20th century.”The Pratt Institute UG urban design studio, Re-inventing Public Housing, is intended as one step toward meeting the challenge starting with the question-must we really accept the super block public housing estate for what it is or is there a way to transform and reinterpret it, and by doing so eliminate its stigma, its isolation, and anti-urban grip on the city?

Users Satisfaction Of Public Housing Projects In Libya

2018 ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Huda Mohamed Elathtram ◽  
Mohammed Ramadan Almousi ◽  
Mahmed Wali Abdalgader Alsharef ◽  
Arch Basheer Musbah Khalifa Alnnaas
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Housing Projects

Profitable partnerships: The Chinese business elite and Dutch lawyers in the making of Semarang

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-245
Author(s):  
Peter Post
Keyword(s):  
Law Firm ◽  
Business World ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Coolie Trade ◽  
Economic Imperialism ◽  
The City

This article examines the collaboration between the law firm of C.W. Baron van Heeckeren from Semarang and the Oei Tiong Ham Concern (OTHC). From the 1880s this Dutch law firm became the centre of a close-knit group of Dutch lawyer-entrepreneurs who through interlocking business directorships developed important sectors of the Javanese economy and the city of Semarang. In doing so Van Heeckeren and his associates teamed up with the Chinese business elite of the port-city. In particular they worked with the foremost Overseas Chinese capitalist, Major Oei Tiong Ham, developing profitable partnerships. The Dutch lawyers acted not only as his legal advisors, but developed his sugar empire as directors-shareholders, held major stakes in his shipping business and coolie trade, and profited from his opium trade. They moreover helped Oei Tiong Ham to acquire real estate and enterprises formerly belonging to powerful Chinese opium farmers and collaborated with him in developing infrastructural and housing projects. This article provides new and revealing details about how the business world of colonial Java worked during the early phase of Dutch economic imperialism and how the Chinese business elite seized the opportunities provided by the Dutch colonial state to advance their business interests.

‘Excavating’ Pruitt-Igoe using space syntax

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Mark David Major
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Space Syntax ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Housing Authority ◽  
Housing Project ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Charles Jencks

Pruitt-Igoe, in St Louis, Missouri, United States, was one of the most notorious social housing projects of the twentieth century. Charles Jencks argued opening his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, ‘Modern Architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.’ However, the magazine Architectural Forum had heralded the project as ‘the best high apartment’ of the year in 1951. Indeed, one of its first residents in 1957 described Pruitt-Igoe as ‘like an oasis in a desert, all of this newness’. But a later resident derided the housing project as ‘Hell on Earth’ in 1967. Only eighteen years after opening, the St Louis Public Housing Authority (PHA) began demolishing Pruitt-Igoe in 1972 [1]. It remains commonly cited for the failures of modernist design and planning.

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