Making Modern Myths

Two planning friends and I saw the new documentary "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth" a few weeks ago, which chronicles the rapid rise and fall of the public housing development in St. Louis that became the infamous example of failed government-sponsored housing. Pruitt-Igoe opened in 1954, in a relatively brief span of years when the federal government spent money on a large scale in housing, but was demolished in 1972 when it was decrepit and substantially empty. I recommend the movie to anyone interested in housing or planning, if only because it's a treat for there to be a documentary about public housing. Urban history students will find much of the narrative about the broader, postwar American context familiar, with passages on growth coalitions, economic restructuring, highways' construction, and federal policy's favoritism for suburbanization. Nonetheless, I had two reactions:

1. Real estate isn't everything. This is a much more widely accepted concept today than when Pruitt-Igoe was built; in fact, it's about as mild and widely acceptable as blanket statements come. In the mid-1950s, the modernist dream held that design would lift people out of poverty. Now, it's readily understood that much more is needed to do that -- jobs, education, all these very knotty, intertwined issues. I work in real estate development partly because it's very fun to have such a direct, pulsating tangible impact on the built world. But community development is a very different concept that's much more comprehensive, lasting and important

Yet housing development of the past 20 years -- particularly the only brand still largely sponsored by the federal government, HOPE VI -- strongly prefers a specific style of real estate development: relatively suburban townhouses that value human scales, personal spaces and bright colors, which can generally be lumped into New Urbanism. When this type of design is criticized, it's for its cultural conservatism and its smaller scope, which produces fewer units than what were in knocked-down projects, not for the specific design flaws that have been readily found in those towers. Yet because most towers failed doesn't mean they all did and doesn't mean townhouses succeed. (Michael Kimmelman references this in his review of the documentary.) I wonder if in 35 years, we'll speak of HOPE VI projects' design in the same derisive tones because poverty and the need for quality low-income housing will still be prevalent.

2. On a related note, what are the massive policy mistakes that are being today, just like urban renewal was in the postwar era? Of course it's very hard to answer this question well when one is in the middle of unfolding history. My friend suggested the subsidies for sports stadiums and convention centers, whose obviously questionable public merits somehow don't hinder governments' desire to routinely throw money at them. But he added that these aren't as directly harmful to the poor as urban renewal was. They're only harmful in the indirect sense because they represent badly allocated spending, not the immediately disruptive policy of the 1950s. He's right to identify stadiums and convention centers. In general, I think this is a very important question that younger professionals should always think about.

Above is the trailer for "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth."