Maybe you are old enough to remember the "progressive" mindset of the late 50s and early 60s. One of the favorite programs of that day was Urban Renewal. Most cities had large areas of old, rundown, lowrise housing that was crowded, unsanitary and crime-ridden.

Urban renewal promised to raze these slums and replace them with affordable high-rise apartment blocks in a garden setting---no more mean streets. They would be clean, modern and airy. The Planners had master's degrees in Urban Planning---how could they be wrong?

Well they were wrong, terribly wrong. The Projects became prisons for their residents; much more crime-ridden than the poor NEIGHBORHOODS that they they so rudely displaced.

There are hundreds of interacting factors that caused these grand schemes to fail everywhere (Robert Taylor is merely the largest). To me, the main lesson is to watch out when the elitists come forth with their grand plans to fix something, whether it's housing or medical or education, etc. Especially anything that incorporates great expense and great control.

BYE BYE ROBT TAYLOR

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Demolition men lead the way out of America's slums

For decades, the in- famous Robert Taylor homes on Chicago's South Side were synonymous with gang murders, drug busts and despair. The skyscraper blocks were an even more violent version of the north Peckham estate in south London where 10-year-old Damilola Taylor was stabbed to death last week.

Earlier this year, the first Robert Taylor block was demolished; it was the start of a plan to destroy 51 of Chicago's worst tenements - the biggest destruction project in the history of American public housing.

Chicago was not alone. Projects to destroy ghettos are under way in Philadelphia, New York, Detroit and Los Angeles as part of a concerted effort by Andrew Cuomo, the American housing secretary.

Regeneration projects, backed by schemes which offer families housing in better areas, are the key to America's success in tackling its ghetto problem. The economic boom there (although it may be coming to an end) has reduced unemployment among young blacks by 30% in the past decade; last year the crime rate dropped by more than 10% for the sixth year in a row. Significantly, the use of crack cocaine, the drug that defined "street" violence, has dwindled. And welfare-to-work programmes have helped to create jobs, reducing inner-city poverty to its lowest level since 1979.

So how has America tackled this problem? The strategy has focused on creating communities that encourage better values through positive role models - Michael Jordan, the basketball star, and Oprah Winfrey, the chat show host, for example - and offering children a sense of aspiration and opportunity which lifts them out of a cycle of violence, drugs and hopelessness.

"The point is not that poverty has been abolished, or will be, but that inner cities are becoming places where people want to live, shop, run businesses and go to school again," says Paul Grogan, the vice-president for government and community affairs at Harvard University and co-author of a new book, Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival.

Neighbourhood activists have formed community-development corporations, groups that obtain public and private funds to build and renovate houses and re-develop shops. Religious charities work alongside them, offering counselling and a spiritual anchor to the most deprived residents.

It has taken America almost four decades to realise what a mistake the 1960s blocks built as "decent, safe and sanitary" housing for the poor had become. The concentration of tenants in high-rises merely spawned ghettos, which intensified poverty and segregation.

Over the past decade, low-rise smaller homes which offer a better environment and more of a sense of community have been built instead (as is the plan in Peckham). Additionally, a measure known as section 8 was introduced by President Bill Clinton which enables families to obtain housing subsidies to live in better areas. They pay 30% of their income - sometimes nothing at all - while the government picks up the lion's share of the rent. Such schemes are operating in 11 of America's biggest cities in the hope that by redistributing the underclass into more wealthy, aspirational areas, they will destroy it.

The policy seems to work. Preliminary research shows that black youngsters who previously failed at school and dabbled in crime improve dramatically in more upwardly mobile areas. Many have found university places or steady jobs, while single mothers are going back into employment.

"People tend to be more productive when they have people around them who are working," said Claire Felbinger, a professor of public administration at American University in Washington DC. "They also feel safer when they are not living next to dealers and gangs."

Cities are also providing programmes to encourage youngsters into work. In Oakland, the depressed suburb of San Francisco, a "midnight technology project" designed to train youths in computer skills (and get them off the street at night) opens next month.

Changed policing methods have also made a difference. Zero-tolerance policing has proved highly effective in cities such as New York and Boston, but now officers are turning to community policing, an old-fashioned equivalent of Britain's bobby on the beat. By getting to know the community, officers say they can often prevent crime before it takes place.

The real key to American progress in this difficult area is co-operation. George Knox, a professor at Chicago State University who founded the national gang crime research centre, says churches, schools, parents and social services are now working with police forces. Gangs and drugs are perceived as a public health hazard which must be stopped.

Knox is one of a growing number of experts who believe that new initiatives, such as safe houses where children can do homework after school, or offering recreational facilities as an alternative to the drug culture, is the way forward.

"We are starting to galvanise the community," he said. Knox advocates prevention, rather than prison. For him, the most important elements in the ghetto renaissance are building new environments, job training, and normalising aspirations.

Perhaps Peckham, in the throes of a similar demolition and reconstruction programme, can also learn the other lessons necessary for beating ghetto culture.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 02, 2000

Answers

Such schemes are operating in 11 of America's biggest cities in the hope that by redistributing the underclass into more wealthy, aspirational areas, they will destroy it.

Why do they want to destroy more wealthy, aspirational areas? ;-)

One point that I did not see addressed is that when you GIVE away housing the folks who receive that housing will NOT take care of it, since they have no investment in it. Hell, even people who make their entire rent payment without govt help do not take care of a home the same as they would if they owned it.

And section 8 has been around a lot longer than Bill Clinton has, I am not sure why this article gives him credit for it, if credit is the right word.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 03, 2000.

"Such schemes are operating in 11 of America's biggest cities in the hope that by redistributing the underclass into more wealthy, aspirational areas, they will destroy it."

I noticed that misnomer, too, Unk. I think they were trying to say destroy the ghettos.

Robert Taylor homes have been a landmark in Chicago for almost as long as I can remember. It was a mistake from the start, and sociologists knew it. Chicago has been reversing the "white flight to the suburbs" trend for maybe 20 years now. If my memory serves me correctly, it began with exposing the money behind the Blackstone Rangers, a presumed gang that began operating on the south side, leading urban whites to believe that the city was unsafe. Once the white folks moved, the 20-year plan took effect. Property values diminished and the folks behind the plan swooped in, buying the property for a song.

I remember looking into some of the urban housing on Chicago's near south side. Communities, complete with schools and shopping had been built within miles of the loop. The homes were WAY out of my price bracket.

Weird that this article comes from the U.K. I wonder if Cabrini will be next.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 03, 2000.

This is stupid. All we need is more midnight basketball.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), December 03, 2000.

Gramatically, I think the best antecedent for "it" in that sentence is "the underclass".

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 03, 2000.

Anita--

When you say "it was a mistake from the start and sociologists knew it", are you talking only about Robert Taylor homes or all such projects? I think you are wrong if you say that sociologists at that time thought that Urban Renewal mega-projects were, in general, wrong. Many sociologists thought that such projects were progressive, even utopian.

There is something interesting happening in our cities. I wonder how it will play out. Many inner-core slums are being gentrified by people who have money, appreciate the proximity of urban living to cultural and work locations and prefer the interesting older buildins to the blandness of the suburbs. Often these gentrified neighborhoods are spearheaded by homosexuals (who have both taste and money) and by heterosexual yuppies. Now, even middle-class families are moving in.

The poor people are being priced out of some these slums and must move to poorer outlying areas. Will North American cities adopt the pattern which has long been common in South American cities--ie, a wealthy inner city ringed by slums, such as the favelas of Rio?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 03, 2000.

I'm old enough to remember reading in the Sunday supplements about how Pruitt-Igoe would "solve the problem of poverty in St. Louis", so Anita is old enough too. It did sound good at the time.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 03, 2000.

Those Sunday supplements were wrong. They are going to solve it....opps, solve poverty with a new plan now, a better plan. I read it here, right at the top of this thread. I read it today, Sunday.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 03, 2000.

Yes, there will always be a new plan. That is how the social engineers earn their living; that is how the social engineers derive their own self-worth.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 03, 2000.

Lars:

Sociologists rejected the concept [and I'm talking about the concept of compressing hundreds or even thousands of poor people into a limited space in general...not just in the Robert Taylor projects.]

There were few [if any] sociologists on the board that suggested/reviewed the plans for such projects. I only remember this because there was a time in my life when I wanted to be a social worker and a professor associated the findings of rats confined to a limited area with the high-rises for the poor.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 03, 2000.

"This is stupid. All we need is more midnight basketball."

Ain't that the truth! I remember riding the sightseeing bus down Grand Avenue in Oakland, CA, and past the "guberment" funded dwellings. They were brand new dwellings 6 months prior, and what I witnessed were rundown, curtains flying out the windows, junkyard cars, and grafftti spread ruins. We all know that when anything is handed to you free of charge, little respect is forthgiving.

BTW, do you have any spare change so I can invest in the Vanguard Total Index Fund?

-- onearmedbandit (onearmedbandit@gimmmmmeeee.com), December 04, 2000.

Lars:

Will North American cities adopt the pattern which has long been common in South American cities--ie, a wealthy inner city ringed by slums, such as the favelas of Rio?

I'm unfamiliar with the favelas of Rio, and I don't remember what Flint mentioned either, but Cabrini sits right next to the Gold Coast on Chicago's NORTH side, where Robert Taylor sat/sits at something like the 2200 block of the South side, pretty much smacked up against the Dan Ryan Freeway. It was/is pretty much across the freeway from the old Komisky Park. I'm pretty sure I spelled that incorrectly, but I was referencing the White Sox park.

I knew a girl who lived in Robert Taylor "homes". I must have met her working in the loop, as my family hailed from the 8800 block of the South side, perhaps two or three miles west of the Dan Ryan. She was afraid to go home every day, and was quite comical in her presentation of opening the door, closing the door, smacking herself against the door and exclaiming, "Phew! Another day I made it home alive."

I'd not be so quick to equate sociologists with urban planners. What YOU call social engineers, *I* call urban planners.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 04, 2000.

Hi Anita--

Yes, I know where Cabrini is. The location is so attractive that I predict it will be razed not only because it is a failed concept but because the pols want the taxes that will come from its redevelopement. I give it 5-10 years.

And yes, I misspoke---sociologists are academics. Among other things, they study, evaluate and critique what the Urban Planners do. But I would guess that sociologists who specialize in Urbanology (for lack of a better word) are also contracted at times as consultants for the Urban Planners and the government agencies that employ Urban Planners. If that is true, then Sociologists bear some responsiblity for the dismal failure of the projects.

Like Flint, I was originally enthused about the projects. I remember the scuzzy slums. It was exciting to see the projects replace them. But I was young and ignorant and idealistic. I wonder what are the excuses of those who should have known better?

BTW, don't you think that unplanned cities, unplanned sections of cities, are more interesting and alive than are urban-scapes that have been created on drawing boards? I think Jane Jacobs called it "organic".

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 04, 2000.

But I was young and ignorant and idealistic

Larsie, now you are old and ignorant and cynical.

-- (who_let_the_dogs_out@who.who), December 04, 2000.

BTW, don't you think that unplanned cities, unplanned sections of cities, are more interesting and alive than are urban-scapes that have been created on drawing boards? I think Jane Jacobs called it "organic".

I think that both can be interesting and alive, Lars, depending on the plans and/or depending upon the diversity of the unplanned. Community interest is fundamental to success, IMO.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 04, 2000.

Anita, as usual, I overstate my case. Both planning and spontaneity are required to make a successful urban space. Certainly infrastructure must be planned. But when considering human interaction, I think we should err in favor of the unplanned. Salzburg over Albert Speers, Rio over Brasilia, a crowded, unplanned market over a windswept, empty public plaza.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 04, 2000.