Purging the Poorest

Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities

Vale Lawrence J.

The building and management of public housing is often seen as a signal failure of American public policy, but this is a vastly oversimplified view. In "Purging the Poorest", Lawrence J. Vale offers a new narrative of the seventy-five-year struggle to house the "deserving poor". In the 1930s, two iconic American cities, Atlanta and Chicago, demolished their slums and established some of this country's first public housing. Six decades later, these same cities also led the way in clearing public housing itself. Vale's groundbreaking history of these "twice-cleared" communities provides unprecedented detail about the development, decline, and redevelopment of two of America's most famous housing projects: Chicago's Cabrini-Green and Atlanta's Techwood/Clark Howell Homes. Vale offers the novel concept ofdesign politicsto show how issues of architecture and urbanism are intimately bound up in thinking about policy. Drawing from extensive archival research and in-depth interviews, Vale recalibrates the larger cultural role of public housing, revalues the contributions of public housing residents, and reconsiders the role of design and designers.

About the Author

Lawrence J. Vale is the Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His many books include three prize-winning volumes: "Architecture, Power, and National Identity"; "From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors"; and "Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods".

Reviews

"'Purging the Poorest' advances a fresh and convincing periodization of the history of American public housing that illuminates clear patterns in the program's convoluted past. Lawrence J. Vale's treatment of this subject is the most original and significant I have read" – Gail Radford, author of "Modern Housing for America"

"This is an exceptional work of original scholarship that will appeal to a wide range of historians, sociologists, political scientists, city planners, and affordable housing advocates. Its topic – public housing and its redevelopment in the past and present – examines one of the most contentious urban policies to emerge from the New Deal. Striking, thoughtful, and convincing, Vale's account makes for engaging reading that is constantly relevant to current debates" – D. Bradford Hunt, author of "Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing"

Back to the list of books