Saturday, April 30, 2016

A Real Estate Project Ended In Disaster——Pruitt–Igoe



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe#/media/File:Pruitt-Igoe-overview.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Pruitt-igoe_collapse-series.jpg



If you propose to build a high-rise public housing project in the United States, your competitors will certainly take Pruitt–Igoe community as a weapon to fight back, and you will be totally defeated. 

Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. It is a middle-class apartheid complex, including thirty-three 11-story buildings. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956. After less than a decade, it has become dilapidated warehouse, the only inhabitants are poor blacks. By the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation. It took less than two years for its completely demolished. Its 33 buildings were demolished with explosives in the mid-1970s, and the project has become an icon of urban renewal and public-policy planning failure.

Pruitt–Igoe community, this trouble is a failure of the building, failed policies, but also the failure of society. Its fate is closely related to the fate of many mid-20th century American cities. Other critics take this opportunity to attack the architect Minoru Yamasaki. They thought he was supercilious and too proud as a social engineering modernist, but cannot consider the needs of ordinary people. However, if think twice, you will find Minoru Yamasaki more like a victim.

After the "1949 Housing Law", this Japanese-American architect began to design this public housing projects in federal funding. Initially, Minoru Yamasaki wanted to design some highly unequal mixed construction. But the Public Housing Authority thought that this design cost too high. To save costs, Minoru Yamasaki changed the height of all buildings to 11 layers. At that time the Congress worried the Korean War a lot, which also made the construction requirements short. The complex had to use some low-quality and inexpensive equipment.

Although Pruitt - Igoe community originally built for the middle class. But not long after the completion, it has become a slum. This drastic change was because of bad timing. The beginning of the design, Missouri law still provided the isolation of public facilities. However, after the US Supreme Court in 1954 on the "Brown v. Board of Education case" judgment, this bill is the total abolition of isolation. Thereafter, the panic white residents chose to leave, Pruitt - Igoe community eventually became special ghettos. Among them, there were many black residents chose to move to the outskirts of the city. Ultimately staying in the community were the poor black residents who unable to leave.

The position of Pruitt - Igoe community in cultural history, was not as significant as its demolished moment. Commentators like to take it as an example to illustrate the various political events. Its  demolished strengthened Americans' the fear of towering, high-density residential area, while this arrangement can be found everywhere in today's much more developed East Asian cities


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