In an era when many decry the failures of federal housing programs, this book introduces us to appealing but largely forgotten alternatives that existed when federal policies were first defined in the New Deal. Led by Catherine Bauer, supporters of the modern housing initiative argued that government should emphasize non-commercial development of imaginatively designed compact neighborhoods with extensive parks and social services. The book explores the question of how Americans might have responded to this option through case studies of experimental developments in Philadelphia and New York. While defeated during the 1930s, modern housing ideas suggest a variety of design and financial strategies that could contribute to solving the housing problems of our own time.
The original guide on modern housing from the premier expert and activist in the public housing movement Originally published in 1934, Modern Housing is widely acknowledged as one of the most important books on housing of the twentieth century, introducing the latest developments in European modernist housing to an American audience. It is also a manifesto: America needs to draw on Europe’s example to solve its housing crisis. Only when housing is transformed into a planned, public amenity will it truly be modern. Modern Housing’s sharp message catalyzed an intense period of housing activism in the United States, resulting in the Housing Act of 1937, which Catherine Bauer coauthored. But these reforms never went far enough: so long as housing remained the subject of capitalist speculation, Bauer knew the housing problem would remain. In light of today’s affordable housing emergency, her prescriptions for how to achieve humane and dignified modern housing remain as instructive and urgent as ever.
High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post-World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy.
In an era when many decry the failures of federal housing programs, this book introduces us to appealing but largely forgotten alternatives that existed when federal policies were first defined in the New Deal. Led by Catherine Bauer, supporters of the modern housing initiative argued that government should emphasize non-commercial development of imaginatively designed compact neighborhoods with extensive parks and social services. The book explores the question of how Americans might have responded to this option through case studies of experimental developments in Philadelphia and New York. While defeated during the 1930s, modern housing ideas suggest a variety of design and financial strategies that could contribute to solving the housing problems of our own time.
An analysis of the New York professional milieu between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the aftermath of WWII reveals an unexpected scenario, in which diverse branches of technical culture and professional and institutional spheres often overlap, and initiatives in the field of architecture are characterised by tensions between designers and technicians, which pave the way for issues of architects’ autonomy, responsibility and social roles in the New Deal. From an initial portrayal of William Lescaze (1896–1969) as an unconventional figure “straddling two continents,” this book challenges a long-established interpretation that sees Lescaze exclusively as promoter of the International Style canons in the United States. Moving beyond it, this book focuses on the role that the Swiss architect played in defining the main features of New York social housing and in the evolution that marks the encounter between European modernity and an American federal scene still profoundly tied to local conventions. From an initially difficult status as an émigré to his involvement in decisional processes and bureaucratic organisations, Lescaze’s professional progress coincides with the gradual acceptance of European forms and models, which, little by little, became part of the institutional language related to public housing which would remain prevalent in New York City until the end of WWII. Drawing from yet-unpublished archival sources pertaining to two fields – housing and architecture – which have traditionally been separate in American historiography, this book sheds light on many crucial issues in a branch of architecture that is particularly relevant today.
Catherine Bauer (1905–64) changed forever the concept of public housing in the United States—and inspired a generation of urban activists to include housing in welfare planning in the mid-20th century. She was one of a small group of idealists who called themselves Housers because of their commitment to raising the quality of urban life through improving shelter for low-income families. In the late 1920s, Bauer spent time in Paris, where she befriended Ferdinand Leger, Man Ray, and Sylvia Beach, publisher of Ulysses. Back in New York she fell under the spell of urban critic Lewis Mumford. It was at his urging that she became involved with the architects of change in post-World War I Europe, among them Ernst May, Andre Lurcat, and Walter Gropius. Convinced by their example that good social housing could produce good social architecture and moved by the visible ravages of the depression, she became a passionate leader in the fight for housing forthe poor. Soon established through her critical writings as a housing expert, she lodged the issue of public housing firmly within the New Deal’s agenda and was instrumental in the creation of the first public housing act in 1937. Her book Modern Housing, published in 1934, vividly depicts the essential interdependence of social, economic, and architectural policies in modern life; it is still required college reading. She taught for many years at the University of California Berkeley, as well as Harvard University.
A Time 100 Must-Read Book of 2020 • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • California Book Award Silver Medal in Nonfiction • Finalist for The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism • Named a top 30 must-read Book of 2020 by the New York Post • Named one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2020 by Fortune • Named A Must-Read Book of 2020 by Apartment Therapy • Runner-Up General Nonfiction: San Francisco Book Festival • A Planetizen Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice “Tells the story of housing in all its complexity.” —NPR Spacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. Nowhere is this more visible than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties of the homeless. The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation’s future has become a cautionary tale. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty chronicles America’s housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist movements that have risen in tandem with housing costs.
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 of design politics to 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.
A Booklist Best Book of the Year: “The definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project,” Chicago’s Cabrini-Green (David Simon, creator of The Wire). Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000—all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago’s ritzy Gold Coast. Eventually, Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource—it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed. In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America’s public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly though the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex’s demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation’s effort to provide affordable housing to the poor—and what we can learn from those mistakes. “Compelling.” —Chicago Tribune “[A] fascinating narrative.” —Booklist (starred review) “A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community.” —Kirkus Reviews “Austen has masterfully woven together these deeply intimate stories of the residents at Cabrini against the backdrop of critical public policy decisions. Ultimately this book is about how as a country we acknowledge and deal with the very poor.” —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here Named a Best Book of the Year by Mother Jones Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction; the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize; and the Chicago Review of Books Award
