Reviews for Behind ghetto walls

The average rating for Behind ghetto walls based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-16 00:00:00 Jennah Chandler The history of Pruitt-Igoe Projects in St. Louis. Probably the first Modernist Architecture to be demolitioned. Look at –... In 1951, an Architectural Forum article titled "Slum Surgery in St. Louis" praised Yamasaki's original proposal as "the best high apartment" of the year. My guess is why it failed "Skip-stop" elevators stopped only at the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth floors, forcing residents to use stairs in an attempt to lessen congestion. Nevertheless, Pruitt–Igoe was initially seen as a breakthrough in urban renewal. Residents considered it to be "an oasis in the desert" compared to the extremely poor quality of housing they had occupied previously, and considered it to be safe. Some referred to the apartments as "poor man's penthouses". Decay On December 7, 1955, in a decision by Federal District Judge George H. Moore, St. Louis and the St. Louis housing authority were ordered to stop their practice of segregation in public housing. In 1957, occupancy of Pruitt–Igoe peaked at 91%, after which it began to decline. Sources differ on how quickly depopulation occurred: according to Ramroth, vacancy rose to one-third capacity by 1965; according to Newman, after a certain point occupancy never rose above 60%. All authors agree that by the end of the 1960s, Pruitt–Igoe was nearly abandoned and had deteriorated into a decaying, dangerous, crime-infested neighborhood; its architect lamented: "I never thought people were that destructive". Residents cite a lack of maintenance almost from the very beginning, including the regular breakdown of elevators, as being a primary cause of the deterioration of the project.[ Local authorities cited a lack of funding to pay for the workforce necessary for proper upkeep of the buildings.[16] In addition, ventilation was poor, and centralized air conditioning nonexistent.[10] The stairwells and corridors attracted muggers.[10] The project's parking and recreation facilities were inadequate; playgrounds were added only after tenants petitioned for their installation. In 1971, Pruitt–Igoe housed only 600 people in 17 buildings; the other 16 buildings were boarded up. Meanwhile, adjacent Carr Village, a low-rise area with a similar demographic makeup, remained fully occupied and largely trouble-free throughout the construction, occupancy and decline of Pruitt–Igoe. Despite decay of the public areas and gang violence, Pruitt–Igoe contained isolated pockets of relative well-being throughout its worst years. Apartments clustered around small, two-family landings with tenants working to maintain and clear their common areas were often relatively successful. When corridors were shared by 20 families and staircases by hundreds, public spaces immediately fell into disrepair. When the number of residents per public space rose above a certain level, none would identify with these "no man's land[s]" – places where it was "impossible to feel ... to tell resident from intruder". The inhabitants of Pruitt–Igoe organized an active tenant association, bringing about community enterprises. One such example was the creation of craft rooms; these rooms allowed the women of the Pruitt–Igoe to congregate, socialize, and create ornaments, quilts, and statues for sale. Demolition In 1968, the federal Department of Housing began encouraging the remaining residents to leave Pruitt–Igoe. In December 1971, state and federal authorities agreed to demolish two of the Pruitt–Igoe buildings with explosives. Legacy Explanations for the failure of Pruitt–Igoe are complex. It is often presented as an architectural failure. While it was praised by one architectural magazine prior to its construction as "the best high apartment of the year", Pruitt–Igoe never won any awards for its design. However, the same architects behind Pruitt–Igoe also designed the award-winning Cochran Gardens elsewhere in St. Louis, which may have been confused with Pruitt–Igoe. Other critics cite social factors including economic decline of St. Louis, white flight into suburbs, lack of tenants who were employed, and politicized local opposition to government housing projects as factors in the project's decline. Pruitt–Igoe has become a frequently used textbook case in architecture, sociology and politics, "a truism of the environment and behavior literature". A noted study of the families who lived in the complex was published in book form in 1970 by Harvard sociologist Lee Rainwater, titled Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum. Pruitt–Igoe was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture; postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks called its destruction "the day Modern architecture died." Its failure is often seen as a direct indictment of the society-changing aspirations of the International school of architecture. Jencks used Pruitt–Igoe as an example of modernists' intentions running contrary to real-world social development, though others argue that location, population density, cost constraints, and even specific number of floors were imposed by the federal and state authorities and therefore the failure of the project cannot be attributed entirely to architectural factors. Footage of the demolition of Pruitt–Igoe was notably incorporated into the film Koyaanisqatsi. As of 2020, the former Pruitt–Igoe site remains largely undeveloped. --- In October 2012, CBS News broadcast a story about how in the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, the Army used motorized blowers in low-income, predominately black neighborhoods to test the dispersal rates of a potentially dangerous compound. Local officials were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked,” according to the CBS story. “But in 1994, the government said the tests were part of a biological weapons program and St. Louis was chosen because it bore some resemblance to Russian cities that the U.S. might attack. The material being sprayed was zinc cadmium sulfide, a fine fluorescent powder. Exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide can lead to adverse effects include lung cancer, prostate cancer, birth defects, liver and kidney damage, anaemia and osteoporosis.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-24 00:00:00 Gail Gordon Enjoyed it. Plans to read it again. Read it many years ago.