If I may ask, I would be interested in this type of subject: building whole city blocks, not just public housing, but also schools, hospitals, shops, industrial places, like in USSR and other examples, are they as bad as public housing or not?
I grew up in a council house (i.e. UK public housing) and so did most of my extended family. It gave us housing security; a good, responsive landlord; and a sense of community. A police officer lived in one of the houses and conflict resolution usually stopped at talking to someone's mom. All that to say: the problem isn't with public housing whatsoever. It can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector simply cannot and does not want to, it sets a standard that private landlords have to compete with, and it gives people security and the ability to live near schools, family, services. The US' demonization of projects - at a time where housing is one of the greatest universal issues for its major cities and homelessness/housing insecurity is rampant - is unfortunate and misses the mark. Structural racism, ongoing economic and racial segregation, the distribution of public resources, etc. are and always were the issue. Combined with having a "beggars can't be choosers" approach to public housing - wherein residents are simply expected to accept whatever top-down vision some planner or architect dreams up - those influences doom a growing necessity to failure.
"It can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector simply cannot and does not want to, it sets a standard that private landlords have to compete with, and it gives people security and the ability to live near schools, family, services." But, if the private sector must compete with public housing ,and public housing can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector cannot, then doesn't that drive all the private land-lords out of business?
@@rexstout8177 So what you meant was, public housing provides housing at a level and cost that some private land-lords cannot provide. If it provided it at a level and cost that no private land lords could provide, then even the good ones would go out of business.
Good points. I will take issue with one though. That of "some vision planners and architects dreamt up" It was local and central gov visions not planners (something doesn't pay any attention to these days) and definitely not architects who have no political influence whatsoever. If its the aesthetics you are referring to however, then yeah architects have a lot to answer for. However, we can't blame architects for coming up with a cheaper more efficient solution to public housing, that governments then implement half heartedly or without understanding it.
@@Sewblon yes it would drive private land lords out of business. but that should be the goal as private landlords almost never put in more money than all their tenants. and what moral right does a landlord have to force someone to be in debt to them just to live there, at a certain you basically don't own it anymore as the money you've paid into the property pales in comparison to what the tenants have put in.
High-rise public housing projects actually works very well in Asia like China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Apartments sold to the middle-class in Asia seemed to create cleaner and safer communities compared to the alley slums of unplanned urbanization.
Also, rich people live in cities in basically every country besides the United States. Suburbia is America's thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it does keep all the poorer people in cities, in these high density housing areas.
@@eitkoml Exactly, high rise housing works well in the US, you can build two identical towers and one will be a luxury high rise and the other will be a slum depending on who lives in each building.
Maintenance IS part of a project and needs to be properly planned for. What you mean, I guess, are the substance / buildings themselves, which is true. Thing is high rise buildings often are build in response to / are a symptom of other issues - here (as becomes apparent in the video) racism and suburbs (=focus of the "market" on what housing is most profitable and not on housing that would be needed or efficient). And as long the underlining problems are not addressed - I fear - high rise housing (the affordable ones - not prestige projects at least) will often be the cheapest "not actually a solution" solution.
@@CinereousDove They are building a lot of 10-16 story human coops in the cities in Russia. Which is kinda unlogical, giving fact that it`s the biggest country on globe.
@@alek488 half the population of Poland lives in houses like that, it's really common because our country was complitely destroyed and milions of people lost their living space. It was the easiest way for the government to give them any type of housing.
Yes, but they house regular people, not just the poorest of the poor, because you lived under communism. Therefore, they are, ironically, less horrible because you don't have only the dregs of society in them.
Town houses are a bad idea. Population density will always be too low for public transport to be efficient. You would have to drive to the nearest grosary store or coffeshop. The best solution is what they are doing in northen Eueope now. 5-9 floor appartment buildings with closed off inner gardens without cars.
Council estates here in the UK would be considered low rise. They where basically entire new towns build from scratch and at the time where considered the way forward. Half the country's city centers where obliterated in WW2 and a lot of people where living in slums. These new council estates where modern and had things that people had never had before. Like an indoor toilet and central heating. The problem was that most of these estates where build miles out of the city in the countryside and with little to no transport links effectively isolating the people who lives there and making it significantly harder to get to the city for work. Also these estates where initially intended to have people from all levels of society living there. From butchers to bankers to bin men to doctors. This was changed to only the most needy. To only the poor. So you ended up with a situation where all the poor where stuck in one place miles from the city, isolated from the rest of society and cut off from job opportunities. Needless to say the estates quickly became shitholes. Shame really. It actually could have worked well.
That is why we should build mixed developments: apartments and offices in on place. Denser communities allow more opportunities for the locals and for bossiness. I have lived in the UK and I have to say that those suburban chav districts are a pain to live in. No shops nearby. Whole streets of identical houses...
Iam Cleaver Why do you have a Russian empire flag? 😂 In my opinion, it is best to have neighborhoods that are mixed in terms of hight. The higher must range between 5 and 20 stories like it is in Moscow.
@@xxxxxx-br6ix Why would it? Your assuming the town you built is somehow shit and undesirable and unable to function like any other town. It's one possible outcome. It could go the other way and become overly gentrified. Or it could be just like any other town. But we are not going to do that by starting out assuming it's going to be a shithole.
As a city planner in Auckland, New Zealand,I love this series. But to be fair mate, there is nothing wrong with well designed high rises, especially with good proximity to public transport. Brutalism is the problem.
If only your higher ups/the central government/residents would agree with you there instead of allowing sprawl over significant horticultural land like they did in the Unitary Plan recently. Although part of the problem has to be developers who feel there’s less risk in suburban development I suppose. I’d have loved to be a fly in the wall for that whole Unitary Plan consultation process.
In Tukey, if you live in a high rise building close to the city center, it means you are rich. Poor people live in suburbs in detached houses. Only super rich lives in detached houses which are close to the city center and have a good neighboorhood.
And now increasingly it's also true in the US. Now there are some luxurious high rise residential skyscrapers across the country. And increasingly ppl living in downtown neighborhoods are like the highest earners. So on the flip side, private, market rate & luxurious high rise housing is actually quite successful here in the US. This market has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and still shows an awful amount of potential to grow...
Some countries change. In US you can live inside or outside the city being a rich person. Outside the city center there are big houses and mansions for the rich lifestyle and inner city condos and penthouses. Also, both areas has lower class properties.
@@caetanobonamigo6597 Exactly,.only in Brazil the city centre itself is usually degraded. But neighbouring districts are usually attractive to middle ans upper class dwellers.
NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) is one of the last to still maintain hi-rise projects (largely because they house a million of the city's 8 million residents), but it is plagued with problems largely because of divestment over the past 30-40 years, sloppy bureaucracy and financial mismanagement. If you live in NYC you know that the City of New York itself is the city's worst slum-lord. We cannot do like other cities did and tear down our hi-rise projects - too many live there - but we need to fix what we have. Looking back in hind-sight, many of the hi-rise projects never should have been built in the first place. Many organic urban communities were destroyed because of that and highway construction.
Agreed. The existing public housing in New York needs to be completely rebuilt to be reintegrated with their neighborhoods and existing street grid, but they definitely still need to be in high rise towers. That's because nearly all of new housing development in NYC is in towers. NYC has the density to support it.
Honestly, if New York City can’t reasonably maintain all the units that it has, (HUD is breathing down its neck over this issue,) then it should consider tearing down 5-10% of its public housing units in order of structural deterioration and shore up the remainder, irrespective of geography or perceived infamy.
I don’t understand how people could believe housing poor people in VERY expensive places is a good idea. Their quality of life would be much better somewhere that better suits their productive output. They could afford to live without being tools of the democrats who stack and pack poor people in and keep them dependent so they have a permanent underclass of cheap votes to maintain their power.
I loved my high rise housing projects --1950s. Marble Hill Projects in the Bronx.. veteran's subsidized originally. It takes a Village. Each building had 14 floors. Neighbors looked after each other. We had elevators.. though they frequently broke down. Over years, the projects became multi-cultural.
Years ago, your right marble hill projects was one of the best, as was Throggs Neck houses. And Palham houses. Our wonderful government CHANGED all of that when they started moving in people who can't appreciate a nice place to live. These people destroyed property as well as brought negativity and crime to these once beautiful places . Then, our federal government stopped financially supporting these complexes, which, of course, started to fall apart. Add horrible people, no funding, lazy workers, and you now have public housing.
Singapore forced coexistence by not letting racial or ethnic enclaves develop. Quotas were put in place that every housing bloc be proportional to ethnic and racial make-up of the whole nation. Can you imagine if America did that? I'd miss the Chinatowns ambience, but it might force harmony. Imagine every city block being the same racial proportion of the whole US, or even of the state, county, or city.
@@리주민 Something that might play an even bigger role is the economic integration of public housing. In Singapore 80% of the population lives in public housing, that means poor, pretty much up to upper class individuals all living together. I think a trap lots of countries, and especially America fall into is viewing public housing as purely a poverty program as opposed to providing a necessary public good.
I'm living in a well maintained high rise. The view is awesome and the apartment nice, nothing to complain about. If you don't maintain the building and utilities, put *only* lowest income families together who are already struggling to survive, well that's just a recipe for disaster. Nothing to do with the actual high rise, though.
Right ! Look at NYC Billionaires Row with all those expensive high-rise apartments . Also Stuyvesant Town housing complex on the east side of Manhattan that looks like any other public housing Project complex but the big difference is the maintenance of the property , the mix incomes , and it haves its own security patrols . The problems we see today were created by people attitudes towards other people . Problems that could have been avoided or solved by humans and it is nothing ordained by supernatural forces beyond our control .
It did work. Whatever projects were being conducted in those projects to these ppl by the powers that be, worked perfectly.. And that, is precisely why "it didn't work...."
@@vespa9566 Nothing like a racist response. It wasn't "blacks" it was "poor" combined with the fact once these places were built, they lacked proper upkeep by the city as well as proper policing.
Honestly, having 4 stories or 5 floors (ground level + 4 levels above that, optionally another level below to make it 6 floors/levels, with 1m tall windows on the top of the wall, for the building's utilities to get some natural light, for when maintenance and repairs are needed) is the best, because you don't need an elevator. Sure, an elevator helps, but even without it you can still get from the top level to the bottom level. Also, they should have a thick metal roof (which should be either aluminium or weathering steel, with the weathering steel much cheaper than the aluminium and they're both rust-resistant). A few buildings should be allowed to have 10 or 15 stories (levels above the ground) The roof doesn't even need to be big enough to fit underneath it, but you can make it as the 4th level if you want, and sell less units due to reduced space, but instead give those at least one of those units a view of the whole city and the rest of the units a view of two halves of the city with the side parts not visible. Ideally have the balcony with windows from half the height of the wall to the top of the wall near where the wall meets the roof, and have them open and have clothes lines so you can dry your clothes in the sun, have the balconies larger so people can sunbath there or stay under direct sunlight while still staying inside your house, and so people can grow food there with room to move between layers of crops on both sides. Oh, and use reflective-metal pipes going from the side walls to the inside of the rooms with frosty plastic and a slider which can cover the frosty plastic, to have "sun tunnels" or use natural sun to light up the interior when its sunny outside, to save up on lighting inner rooms like the toilet or the hall, and for the stairway used by the whole building you can have a large plastic lens and a large pipe going from the roof top to the underground, with the same system of frosty windows on each level illuminating from the top of the stairway and from right underneath the stairway for the other stairway. At most, you might need 2 such sun tunnel pipes for the stairway, one for each side, to make sure both sides get enough sunlight to not need other lights during the day, and you can have a tiny solar panel which to keep the electric lights turned off at night and which to turn them back on when it gets dark. And you can also zone the ground level as a commercial area, or at least zone an area right around the building as commercial area while still allowing the commercial area to be technically part of the same building or using the same wall even if you need to have a thicker wall to have both the thickness of the residential area and the thickness of the commercial area added together, so you can have shops on the ground floor so people can buy their groceries from there, so they don't need a car to get the daily necessities. Oh, and all commercial structures which require heating or baking things would require to have two heat pipes going to the top floor, one outside the city block for use in the summer, or when hot-enough, and another one inside the city block for use in the winter to also heat up some rooms passively. And the air going inside the building should be filtered, including using a water filter (using a pump to send the gas through a pipe spiraling inside a bucket and with tiny holes angled slightly clockwise and towards the outside, to get the gas bubbling, and having it at an angle helps with mixing the gas and water together, to make a sludge which can be harvested and turned into tar or something else, as a byproduct of keeping the inside pipes and the air around the building clean. And use cement formed in molds to make the facade (outer shell) of the building look fancy and welcoming, as opposed to a flat wall of the concrete jungle. And the facade doesn't even need to be thick, it can be at most 5 cm or 2 inch in thickness, if using plastic fibers to keep it together (i.e. a plastic-wire mesh acting like an armature), for the bigger pieces (i.e. the whole level or more), or half of that (2.5 cm or 1 inch) for smaller pieces (i.e. strips around 2x4 yards or 2x4 meters or smaller). Each building can have a different set of facades, even if the only difference between two nearby buildings is one of the molds for the facades having a different model, or part of a mold being different (if the molds are modular, i.e. screwing them together before the waxing/oiling/vaselineing/lubing before the pour). This is how city blocks could be made to feel welcoming again. And they could still be made to look unique, by varying the colors of some parts, without altering the structure by much. i.e. one building could have the accents made with cement which looks like granite, another one with cement which looks like marble (including the marbling in both), yet another one made to look like dolomite, another one made to look and add a bit of cement pigments to the mixture, and you get even more possible variety. And if you use different cement mixtures for different depths of the mold, and let them cure (at least partially) before adding more cement, you can get even more color variety, especially if you also angle the molds to get some other parts colored, like adding highlights and shading to the pieces (i.e. a brighter color towards the sky and a darker color towards the ground). And being able to customize the outside of the building could help give the residents a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a community, and maybe encourage them to help make or maintain the outside of the building. Getting the whole building re-painted every decade or so wouldn't cost that much, and repairing the broken parts would help spot problems before they become too big.
Whenever there's a plan to help the poor, there will always be predators to take advantage of any loopholes. (edit) "Fun Fact": Ladders from fire trucks can extend no higher than the 8eight floor.
@WorldFlex my prof once said that some colleges of his would not stay in hotel rooms higher than the 10th floor so that in case of fire they could escape via the balcony
I've lived in nice 6 story apartment buildings in the Seattle area, and a practical problem not even hinted at with this is the slow elevator problem: to save money, they tend to have horribly inefficient elevators and not enough of them in such places, and that's in "luxury" apartment buildings. I wonder how many and how slow the elevators were in the projects, when they worked? When it's hard to quickly get in and out, human nature is to not do it very often due to too much friction, even if all your neighbors are friendly. The larger and taller a building, the less likely you are to know your neighbors which leads to a lack of social cohesion and friendliness because people only see each other when they have no real choice getting in and out of the building.
You forgot the car. You can't live in a suburb without one and the rise of car ownership and the suburb are closely related. Cities are always offer major job opportunities, especially for non-educated workers. So where should they live, in slums? High rise housing is just logical if there's no alternative for transportation.
I think you may have COMPLETELY missed the entire premise of this video.Perhaps you should watch it again because if my instincts serve me right your opposition has more to do with a defense of the white suburbs than any real concern for working people.
We need high rise housing in SF and the bay area. Property values are way too high and it's starting to choke or at least severely pervert the growing tech industry. Walk around the bad neighborhoods in SF and you'll see the slums today are alive and well. Meanwhile the tech industry continues to grow and the wealthy become wealthier. This is not a safe situation.
I live in a 9-story house in a Western-European mixed-income suburb. 15 minutes by subway to the city centre. And that is pretty average over here. It is not about the high-rise but about city planning and politics.
When the topic of public housing comes up, I often think about how Singapore did it so successfully when America failed so spectacularly. In Singapore public housing worked due to a combination of good policies. That included highly competent government oversight (the ruling party there prides itself on being known as the ones who housed everyone, so they have a large incentive to maintain the quality of housing), constant upkeep and remodeling, and making its residents buy instead of rent (well, these are technically 99-year leases, but that’s besides the point). Additionally, the government create units in each building that were affordable and desirable to its poor, middle, and upper classes, respectively. Then, when placing people in housing, they made sure it mixed people of different ethnicities (there was a big divide between ethnic Chinese and ethnic Malays in the city at the time) and socio-economic classes were together to prevent certain areas from becoming more desirable than others and ensure social cohesion. The government also worked hard to ensure there were ample public transit connections between the housing projects and places of business, so its residents had ready access to employment. It was as much of a work of social engineering as it was actual engineering. Basically, this is the opposite of what the US government did. Once built, public housing projects were not maintained or policed. These projects were often built in the peripheries of cities, and without decent public transportation. This, combined with most of its residents already being poor blacks, and this invariably helped perpetuate the cycle of poverty. The projects became seen as a place of crime, drug use, and poverty. America’s history or racism and classism lead to the belief that these projects were a failure due to the failures and inferiority of its residents, ignoring the absolutely awful government planning and mismanagement that went into creating the projects and subsequently leading them to fall into decay. Though, in defense of city governments, the decay of public housing also coincided with huge budget crises of the 1960’s and especially the 1970’s, where deindustrialization and white flight turned cities like Detroit from a vibrant manufacturing center to, well, Detroit. The federal government did little to help. America just seems to always fail at implementing large scale social welfare programs, or only ever commits to them half-heartedly. Luckily today, there seems to be some progress being made with housing. It’s becoming increasingly popular for the government to subsidize private housing developers to create affordable housing units. These are usually built as low-rise condos or town homes and are integrated into more affluent/middle class communities, or for every few normal housing units, one unit is an affordable unit. These units are actually quite nice, if modest, and are designed to blend into their communities, rather than be towering eyesore that advertise to everyone “the poor live here.” For Americans it seems, affordable housing is more achievable when done quietly through government subsidies to private developers than when done as massive public works projects.
Great info. American govt is a failure. The People are trying to get rid of them. The 60,70,80 year old plus members are the problem makers and consistent in their problem making and ineptitude. They left the under 60 members with nothing but corruption and ineptitude to follow as a plan. And potential new members are wasting their time because the system is already designed for failure; not success. 🤷😬🙄
I love the part where you remind everyone that the American right loves to blame social or gasp socialist policies failing on a personal flaw or moral failing instead of blaming the ruling government at the time. The Government is like we failed and you have no one to blame but yourselves. Yes in order to have adequate funding not saying I agree with this or anything but yes, the middle class and upperclass must want and desire to live there. I've been homeless before. I know what it's like to always be around homeless people. It's way better to be around your friends or a healthy support system that's for sure.
To be honest, the failure of the project housing in the United States was simply part of the entire failure that was the welfare system and the war on poverty. It's one of those policies that sounds good on paper and plays to people's emotions in that its saying, "yay we're helping the poor," but in reality what it created was a system where you were worse off if you sat right outside the threshold to receive welfare benefits creating zero incentive to work towards furthering your financial status and improving your living situation which in turn created a stagnant culture within poor communities, inner city communities particularly. Plus, it incentivized single motherhood by giving more benefits to single mothers which in turn made a father's responsibilities to his children in essence obsolete. In 1960 around 2/3 of black children were living in two parent households, but after the beginning of the war on poverty single parenthood within the black community began to skyrocket. Then there is the obvious increase of crime and everything else from project housing. Obviously there are plenty of other factors that have effected poor communities, particularly in the inner city, but I don't think the effect the welfare state had should be ignored. The main goal of the welfare state in most peoples minds would probably have been not to make life better as a poor man, but to help people get out of poverty entirely, I mean that is the "American dream" obviously, but what the welfare state was essentially like is giving a homeless man on the side of the road money. All your doing is giving him what he needs to continue the bad habits which are keeping him homeless in the first place be it alcoholism, serious drug addiction, etc. and money can't help to improve whatever other issues that person may be dealing with like mental health issues. To actually help a homeless man you have to give him the help he really needs. In hindsight, the welfare state feels as if it was genuinely intended as a program that was meant to keep poor people poor even if it actually wasn't
I don't think the problem with projects was necessarily form (height/density), but rather context (location/land-use). High-rise public housing can work if it's spread out across various neighbourhoods and integrated with mixed uses (retail, employment, recreation)
But why do high rises fail? Why can't people live there in peace like in Hong Kong or Singapore? What make Americans (of any race) unable to get along in a high rise situation?
Callie Masters Because theyre low income, some in the housings use illegal ways to get money. The US is different from singapore. Way more crime, guns are easy to get, and gangs are more rampant.
Callie Masters In Finland are build many apartment block building areas near cities all the time, and they are coming increasily popular when people move from countryside low rise houses to urban areas. Its just easy to just rent new apartment than owning low rise suburban house.
Because these projects are uninspired prison-like monoliths, designed in eras where racism often took priority over good planning. They're too often improperly serviced and have emergency issues like inadequate fire preparation.
I guess you never heard of the "kowloon walled city" in China. It was the largest housing project in the world, a pure shit hole. New York and San francisco have high rise condos/apt over 20 stories high that "work" because they're occupied by rich and upper middle-class.
Singapore was successful in their high rise housing. Seems the US and the UK merely failed to implement what to do next: integrate these housing projects to mass transit and build amenities and accompanying facilities nearby.
@@Tolpuddle581 Thamesmead was not connected to transit networks and now jurisdiction is given to the private sector because, well, Thatcher. Of course it will fail.
thing is though a lot of residents of council towers in the UK would actually quite like to live there if councils were actually given money to maintain them
There are estates in London that had their own facilities, shops, public spaces, close to public transport and they still failed. Whole place fallen into disrepair and squalor. Councils kept concentrating problem tenants in certain towers and estates, worsening the problem.
I'm currently reading a book called "The Color of Law" which covers a lot about housing and segregation during this period. Recommend to anyone who's wants to get into more detail.
@@ms.b14571 yes there was, every project or building doesnt have on, there sill projects in nyc that still has it all depends on ssize and how close it is to a "good" place.
The removal of Dad’s by the system helped destroy many of these project communities.Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis initially admitted needy women and children only.
kyuketsukitomodachi No, they didn't do any of that. These families were only told that if there was no male figure in the household above the age of 17, they would be eligible for double the handouts. If you did a little bit of research, you can find that many of the governmental agencies actually had requirements of their bureaucrats to express these points to each and every applicant. There were even flyers and mail notices which brought up these points. Oh, and let's not forget that you can actually hear LBJ mention all of this as part of his strategy in the recordings he had of the oval office and have long since been released to the American public. His entire "war on poverty" was designed to enslave impoverished black voters to the Democratic Party by gradually worsening their living situation and increasing their reliance upon governmental welfare assistance.
Unlitedsoul but how does that force anyone to do anything? I agree the democrats have turned inner cities into voter plantations. However the responsibility ultimately falls on the people who choose to give up freedom for financial security.
You glossed over the part of why they failed. There was stigma by non public housing recipients, causing the building to be occupied by only low income residents. This increased disrepair and crime. High rises were not the problem. The lack of integration to the community was the problem. Subsidized high rise buildings with minimum % of section 8 distributed throughout would be a much better solution. Furthermore, residents that escaped the need for public housing would need to leave their existing community to find new housing. Upward mobility in the same neighborhood is an important part of building a strong community.
Section 8 simply spreads out crime. Several years ago, there was a good article showing this happening around Memphis in the liberal magazine “The Atlantic”.
@@AmbientMorality Actually no. If u control the rent too much landlords would just stop putting their units onto the market, and buy/develop far less units for rental, causing a severe shortage.
Thank you for : 1. Not putting terrible dubstep/music over everything. 2. Being clear in speech That is all. Video is great! I live in Denmark, so why should I give a F' about this topic? I don't know! You made it interresting and I feel wiser after seeing this video - so thanks :)
@@tannwich5350 Nothing is like US!!! I have seen cities in Iraq that look better than some parts of the US (and not even exagerating here!) The difference with Europe, is that racism isn't as visible as in USA where the whole system is build on segregating communities and discriminating people just by their skin tone! In most European nations, you can actually even go to college even if you're from a low income family. I would say come to Europe in the summer and travel different countries since everything is nearby with a train. It broadens the way you see the world. And not just Europe for that matter.
@@ABC-ABC1234 Interesting, and wouldn't I love to visit Europe! Here, lots of low income 1st-gens go to college, and are actively recruited and supported, but I understand it is easier financially, if not academically, in Europe. The only race-indifferent place I've ever been to is Toronto. It was so peaceful, and people of every color and country of origin (like the Lincolnwood area in Chicago - 102 languages spoken at my kid's school) - but I have to say I missed the high energy and vibrancy that comes from having the strong, independent black, Latino/a, and other communities here. All the black people blended in, which is nice, but there seemed to be little if any actual black culture. I realize there are horrible parts to the segregation - which is getting so much better, especially during Obama's term, except for the poverty - but I wish we could keep the good parts and that something great emerges from it all. Also, from what I can tell, the worst places to live are the Kowloon Walled City in China, the favelas of Brazil and Manila, and the slums of Mumbai. I, a relatively privileged sort, (I haven't had to kill or sell drugs to eat yet) would probably not last a week in any of these, nor in NYCHA.
There was always a shortage but once you got one the rent was very. When the Soviet Union collapse people inherited their apartments and no one was evicted.. In the US today a Tsunami of eviction is approaching....
Public housing buildings are usually built with shitty materials that fall apart: 1. The bricks aren't fired long enough, so they crack in the winter. 2. The walls are cinderblock, and the builders don't bother to drywall. 3. The windows are made of cheap metal, so they get stuck. 4. The building is placed far from the sidewalk, so it's isolated.
1. There is no supervision, though hundreds / thousands of children live there. 2. No removal of tenants who attack others. 3. No stores or needed services on premises. 4. No labor contribution required of tenants, as in co-ops, such as elevator monitoring. 5. No locked entry, as in other high rises / multi-tenant buildings.
One thing the execution of the housing towers project towers was poor. The high rise complexes that were built lacked a lot of the features of Le Corbusier's original concept. Instead boring buildings that were pretty much warehouses for people were built and they were poorly policed and maintained.
As a modernist fan it always frustrates me how Jencks among other postmodernists did such a good job of connecting all the problems of social housing of the time: The crime and state of dilapidation to modernist principles and design rather than real causes like segregation, lack of investment, wide unemployment in the 70s, shoddy craftsmanship etc
High rise buildings are nice, if they are about 10 to 20 levels, and very *well spaced from other buildings.* 4 large trees between the buildings is nice to have too !
I would still say anyone would favor high-rise building that never exceed 7 levels at max, and such that avoid long corridors. And yeah they have to be spaced in some sort of context. If they are spaced individually, just one after another there is something very off putting about them.
It seems stupid to me to build higher than you can walk. An elevator might be nice, but there will be one day when it is broken or they will be a fire. So more then 5 to 7 stories are too much in my view. Personally I don't even like 5 stories because I think thats too gigantic for humans (depending also on the architecture, as Gründerzeit buildings can handle this really good)
a bit off subject. Im a firm believer in "to each his own" but apartment buildings are terrible. In my late teens my family got stuck in one for 8 months, wasn't even a cheap place and We felt robbed of 8 months of our life's. The fact that the walls, floor and ceiling you rent or buy is attached to someone else sickens me. I love my huge yard, garage, deck, porch, driveway and its all mine. I could sleep on the lawn if I wanted. Some people hate having this much to take care of and cant imagine having to worry about all of it but again.. "to each his own"
I LOVE videos like this, it gives a glimpse into history, even if some parts of it aren't as comfortable as we would like it to be. Thank you very much for making these.
I lived in the Robert Taylor projects. My family moved in a year after they were built, I think 1962. I have wonderful memories. Both my parents lived in those slummed neighborhoods as kids prior to the buildings being built. We did move out long before the demolition. The building that I lived in was the very first building torn down.
The video also talks about the shift away from high rise public housing and makes it seem as if the type of building had something to do with the crime ridden neighborhoods.
a highrise without maintenance and security breeds crime, creates a sense of loneliness and when a disaster such as a fire or gas leak occurs the number of likely casualties grows exponentially, plus no one wants them in their neighborhood, all this is of course talking about public housing not luxury or upper middle class apartment towers
Great video! I grew up West of the Chicago suburbs in the '90s, so I've always heard about what a terrible idea high rise public housing was and what a lasting, damaging effect it had on society. My dad (who went to architecture school at one point) had no shortage of ideas about how to improve public housing. I don't live in public housing, but my current housing situation is quite similar to the ideas he described. It's a small complex of low-rise buildings in a decent neighborhood, not far from the center of town. The buildings are well-constructed, but they're obviously old, so rent is super low. We're a mixed tenant population (both ethnically and demographically) and we all hold jobs. It's not a perfect arrangement by any means, but we make it work. I hope the current public housing model provides individuals and families with a similar quality of life.
I love this type of housing structure, in places like Spain for example its beautiful. Its all about keeping the peace in this type of environment for it to work well.
I found this video to be quite informative. I have recently for the first time found it necessary to move into public housing and yes I agree that it is intended for middle class people who are struggling thankfully I qualified because up to that point I and my six-year-old was sleeping on the floor at of my adult children's home until I was able to get back on my feet so I very much appreciate this opportunity for a fresh start... God Bless America 🇺🇸
UCLAJediKnight Well, if Anita Richmond is the anonymized screen name for Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, her firstborn child (Prince Charles) was born 14 November 1948 and her youngest (Prince Edward) was born 10 March 1964. Therefore, when Prince Edward turned six in March 1970, Prince Charles would have been 21 if I did the maths correctly (ie, an adult). And it is believed that all four of The Queen’s children have the same baby daddy. Any other questions?
Also i see it easier since it one solid building they dont gotta do different size places and ea apartment is same size and have same details give or take not all bathrooms are on same side or gotta have stairs and elevator to go down anytime or up anytime. so variety details to have in one big like building. compared to any med or small places so gotta make sure all the places are right size and all.
At 6:14 thanks for including the Hawthorne Park area in Philadelphia in this video. It's an excellent example of what the original public housing should have been. There used to be high rise public housing on this site but like all of it's day, it fell to neglect and crime and was demolished in 1999. Planners built new homes to match those of the houses already in existence and mixed both public and private housing to mix up the classes. That neighborhood is beautiful and you'd never know most of those homes were public housing. That is how it should have gone in the early 1900s.
I love living in my high rise building in Switzerland. I have a great view, cool and fresh air and because there are many people here, there is good connectivity by road and many shops close by. Although there are a couple other high rise buildings in the vicinity it is not like those blocks but rather with varying heights and shapes. I think that makes a big difference.
@GPAGE actually I am an immigrant with disabilities. That didn’t stop me from being successful. That is Switzerland where anyone can rise if they deliver.
@Please and Thank You Does it make a difference WHERE the poor live? It would seem whatever area they went to would be poor, cause, well, poor people live there now, so if they stay or go away...they cant run away from their poverty. Housing plans doesnt solve poverty. Work and managing education and finances do.
Lit.: While the rest of the world promote public housing, US is demolish them. Is that means the end of public housing is inevitable and future trend? Or is just the America is going backward?
I'm not sure the US gave up on high-rise living at all. There are many going up all over the place- all the time. However, obviously, like this video pointed out, public housing is a different story.
Very nice video. Want to share some info: I live in Moscow, Russia. Hi-rise buildings were a standard in USSR like one-family houses was a standard in US. But in our case, soviet hi-res buildings didn't become ghettos and are still most common housing solution. The reason for that is, well, there was no house market in USSR ( people waited for years to get flat from state for free), and inhabitants of one building could be from different social stratas. In one building there could live scientists, military officers, workers, alcoholics and antisocial people, people of different nationalities , and people of different age. There could be better micro district, there could be worse micro districts, but, in general, the quality of life was the same.(1990-1998 was a shit time for Russia, but I remember how i was shocked as a kid, how horrible cities were in American movies and how "Candy" beautiful suburbs were ). But now, the situation is changing. Our house development companies went crazy and started to ignore soviet building standards: thinking about profit, they started to build tall houses very close to each other and they don't care about infrastructure (I live in 8 floor tall house in a micro district build in 1960, and i love the fact that everything i need is in 5-10 walk minute, including subway). People buy those flats, but in time, those micro districts will become ghettos... Check this out: varlamov.ru/ 2225584.html varlamov.ru/ 1845663.html I personally believe, that city, as a complex system, should have different housing solution. The majority of resident house should be medium (4-7 floor tall), as they have best personal comfort/city efficiency balance. But there is a place for big and tall apartment complexes and areas for single-family houses.
I don't support it: 1) Government tries to save house development industry. They say it costs will be payed by investors, but i really doubt that. Highly possible it will be paid from the budget, which is fucked up. 2) There is little details about new houses, new districts and rules, but citizens are forced to make decision now: do they want to join the renovation or not. In Russia we call it "To buy a cat in a bag" - to make a decision without enough information. 3) New houses will have more floors. Government tells that it will be 7 - 11 floor max, but it is hard to believe. It is possible that there could be 20-30 floor buildings. 4) More floors means more pressure on infrastructure. There is little room in kindergardens, schools and hospitals already. More cars on road and crowds in subway. 5) Besides, there already exist government program to demolish old building and construct new houses for families instead. It it a slow program, but it works. They demolish not whole micro district (like new renovation program wants) but house by house.
I'm also from Moscow, but currently live in Minsk :) There is another economical reason why they're building all these horrible microdistricts: Moscow (and in less degree St. Petersburg) is pretty much the only place in Russia where an average person can have a reasonable salary to sustain a somewhat good quality of life. My speculation is that about 30% of all Russian population is concentrated in Moscow and it's satelites. Demand creates supply. Add here outdated soviet building standartds and people's little knowlage about what is considered a decent housing in the developed world... and we get this. Also I need to add that this housing isn't cheap at all. A two-rooms apartment (it's not the same as two-bedrooms in the US where you also have living room, here you will only have two rooms + kitchen + bathroom/toilet) will cost AT MINIMUM 8,000,000 RUB and an average salary in moscow is about 60,000 RUB a month (if you trust ROSSTAT). As you can see you will need at least 10 years to save all your salary to buy one (a half if you have a working spouse). OR you can get a mortage with 12+% of year interest (as majority of buyers do).
Michael Miriti agreed. I was born in Moscow, and must say that Moscow is a parasite on Russian. All major finance and taxes are concentrated here. We need to decentralized country and make regional economy rise, so people would rather stay there.
chatnoir1224, I was born and raised in the projects in New York City in the late 1960s thought the late 1980s. The projects I grew up in, in the South Bronx used to be a nice place to grow up. There was a mix of poor, working and middle-class families and management was very selective about who they rented to. My family was on a long waiting list to get an apartment and because my parents were married and my father was serving in the Navy in Vietnam, we got one. We had nice playgrounds, basketball and handball courts, and the green spaces were regularly kept up. There was even a police department assigned just for the projects that was run by the New York City Housing Authority. We had it a lot better than some of our neighbors outside the projects who still lived in the old five-story tenement buildings that were typical in New York City. Things took a nosedive in the 80s when control of the projects past from the state of New York to the federal government. That's when the budgets for building maintenance, screening perspective tenants and security were slashed. The crack epidemic was the final nail in the coffin for the projects, in my opinion. It was the first time I had ever heard gunshots fired in my neighborhood and since I was old enough to move away to attend college by that time, I did. Commenters are correct when they say that the height of the buildings have nothing to do with why the project failed. There are still plenty of high-rise buildings all over New York City to this day that are clean, safe and operating just fine. The differences is that they're provide better (albeit private) security and maintenance. If the state and/or federal government cared about the projects they should have continued to maintain them as was originally intended instead of passing them around like hot potatoes and leaving them to rot.
Thanks for sharing your story. I agree: doesn't matter where which side of Atlantic are we, effective maintenance and diverse population (with majority people from working and middle class ) is the key for success Project/Hi-rise.
It's crazy how much racism is engrained into US society. I have watched a wide range of City Beautiful videos and I can't tell you how many times I've seen racism playing a part in city planning. It's no surprise that things still haven't changed, even today.
The video explained why they were built, but made it sound like hi-rise public housing is somehow inevitably doomed to failure, which is absolutely not the case...
"Nobody was forced to live there"?! WTF? That is exactly what happened! The video said that banks wouldn't finance them and realtors wouldn't show them houses. Where were they supposed to go? Just buy a tent and camp out on some rich guy's lawn? Do you know how much it costs to move? Do you really expect people to walk to another city? This was before civil rights, remember? Police could arrest PoC for no reason and they'd be stuck in jail, unable to work, and nobody cared. You really think thousands of PoC travelling to new places would be accepted into the local economies without a fuss?
Good history lesson, but you make it seem as though the new “mixed income” developments that replaced them solved all the housing problems. In essence, developers eyeing the prime real estate the projects were sitting on were able to make huge profits by leasing apartments to upper middle class white families, while only a fraction of the original, poor, black families living there were able to re-integrate into the buildings. Most of them fell through the cracks and had to relocate to other parts of the city.
The reason the projects got demolished was crime, crime, crime,because in the sixties they were shooting at the police from the top floors ,some people has to ruin it for others.
At 4:01. You can see my apartment in the very far upper-right hand corner of this video! That's pretty cool! :D Also, these high-rise housing projects in Two Bridges in Manhattan are not dangerous--the vast majority of the inhabitants there are harmless elderly people. I cross these green parks all the time when I need to go grocery shopping, so Le Corbusier was correct on that count. Having such large swathes of greenery in the middle of the busy, gray city is nice, especially for the old folks who like to while away the time on benches.
Common Zenoric I recommend you read up on modernism and learn what it was trying to accomplish. We shouldn’t discount modernism wholesale. (Apologies if you have studied the subject; it’s unclear from your comment alone how versed you are in architectural theory.)
5:44 Wonder if this was part of the reason Kendrick's dad moved out of Chicago. "He came from the streets the Robert Taylor Homes Southside Projects, Chiraq, the Terror Dome Drove to California with a woman on him and 500 dollars" - Kendrick Lamar; Duckworth
Watching this makes me angry. I’m just happy that we as black people have come a long way. My mom owned her own home at 23 in the 80s and the house is still in the family. We were taught to strive for better and me and my siblings have accomplished that. Fuck where the government wants you to be. You gotta make your own way out here and we definitely have done that and are still doing it to this day
It sounded like the biggest issues was funding if they went with the cheapest option. They also didn't have the funding to maintain them so if something broke it was broke for a long time. Also, with so many people in such a tight space, I bet there was a long waiting list to get anything done.
No. The authorities wanted the projects to succeed. President Johnson spent billions to build them. The projects failed because the residents knew that they could never purchase a unit, because it was government property. The residents destroyed them.
Keldon McFarland Citing LBJ as evidence of the government wanting anything associated with non-white minorities to succeed is simply stupid. Johnson ranks with the likes of Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson as the most racist presidents in American history. LBJ's own agenda with the "War on Poverty" was to make minorities subjective slaves to the Democratic Party by increasing their reliance upon governmental support. He spent billions knowing that it would worsen the lives of impoverished blacks (primarily), while under the guise of aiding them. The entire program was designed to fail in it's publicly addressed goal, but succeed in LBJ's personal agenda. If you actually research the history of most of these housing projects, you find that somewhere along the line white, "progressive" Democrats forced budget cuts which would have provided the required maintenance and security to keep these places operating in a humane manner. To go along with this, it is often those same white progressives who rezoned the areas around these housing projects specifically to limit economic growth. All of this to keep black voters in line with the Democratic Party through heightened reliance of welfare programs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The major fallout happened when federal subsidies were reduced or cut because the local and state authorities refused to uphold their end of the deal. The federal government continued to feed billions of dollars into these projects, only to see local and state governments siphon it all away... hundreds of millions of it ending up directly in the pockets of corrupt Democrats, or worse, into the hands of mobsters with maintenance contracts through their construction companies which were rarely lived up to in any form whatsoever.
These ugly high rise houses literally are the same as what China built through 1950~2000, not as public housing, but as mid-end private residencies. Most of them survive today, and quite a sight to behold. Do a video on China please~
But with the high population of china, there would be almost no over options. City would exceed a diameter of 20-30km if the don't grow in height. So travel distances would become longer and longer.
I've always liked the idea of a super-efficient megaplex that mimics the luxuries you might find on a cruise ship, but it would take a lot of QUALIFIED PEOPLE, such as hospital staff, police, garbage, utilities, engineers, etc. to maintain, plus an ultra-robust monorail system that can transport people, garbage, goods, etc. It'd also need a large solar farm with batteries, as well as parking for all those people, which means it wouldn't be as land or money-efficient as you'd initially think. Advantages: Less travel distance to work if you're a specialist, monorail can do the work of hundreds of trucks and hundreds of cars, cars see less use, meaning they break less and chew up less gas, utilities are ultra-efficient, no lost water pressure or electricity due to distance traveled, emergency response times would be SECOND TO NONE, distance to education = phenomenal, parks, etc., all walking distance. Projects don't have ANY OF THESE specialists or facilities. Imagine a game of Sim City where all you did was zone residential and give it power and water. No wonder projects became slums. It's inevitable.
Tell the truth.. They wanted the best way to keep “minorities” condensed in one area and from reaching/spreading into the suburbs… So it’s better UP than OUT…. Same pattern in most big inner city low income developments..
Made by the same "people" who have the money 💰. It's so clear their design to oppress but everyone wants to be blind to their racism because it was planned that way
Its better than saturating the suburbs with low lives. It only takes a couple houses out of dozens to ruin a neighborhood. It also lets them concentrate services needed by people in those communities in one place. It would be nice if they could build something with jobs or public transportation to work nearby as well.
I always wondered why the projects very rarely have fire escapes? Its almost as if they want them to be unable to get out in emergency situations... smh
Modern tower blocks tend to have two internal staircases precisely for that reason. You don't necessarily have to hang the fire escape on the outside of the building. It's unlikely to be a fire in both staircases at once, and if that is the case, well, external fire escapes probably wouldn't be of much use anyway.
imperatur this video doesn't teach you the truth, it just assumes away problems to racism. The real reason none of these projects work is because people don't care about free stuff.
No. It shows you that when racists control the government, they remove funding until the program fails and then use that as proof the program never worked. Then people like you who think "certain people" can't be helped because they are all do nothing and lazy and you re-elect those same people to ruin the programs. They're doing it to you too.
I feel this video tries to blame “high rises” as the source of the problem, but the high rises themselves were never the problem, the issue is how they were managed. Low income minority groups were concentrated in these buildings that were poorly taken care off creating a sense of isolation and possibly even rejection from the rest of society. If these buildings and their communities were better integrated and more diverse, ie. with a more balanced mix of black, whites and other populations, from various income levels, it would have been a very different story. This project failed because this is what happens when you try to segregate people. How tall the buildings actually are is quite irrelevant.
wjatevrr folks who make middle income wages and/or higher, don't want to live with low or no income folks. while not all poor folks rob and steal some do. course rich folk steal too. I don't know but if I lived in the same nice apt bldg as someone who doesn't work- unless they are elderly or otherwise unable- I would be feeling like I deserved more. lack of control of themselves and or their kids turned these high rises into places of fear and drug use. plus lack of upkeep of bldg, pipes, elevators, washers, driers, killing of roaches, bed bugs and the like led to failure. some city's have high rises and the top floor is the " penthouse". so it can work.
New Orleans just finished knocking down the last of the low rises and replaced them with really nice looking townhouses. The old ones looked pretty bad and you tended not to want to walk back there. The new ones appear to be inviting. Hope they stay that way.
How about a video about the (possibly European style?) low-rise apartment blocks with stores on the first floor that seem to be appearing in American cities en masse nowadays?
Thanks for making this. I was volunteering in South Chicago in 2001 and I saw Cabrini Green up close. I thought the giant high rises for low income housing were eye sores. I am glad that they have newer housing now for low income residents.
@@roderickstockdale1678 oh alright I get it now and yeah Cabrini was put in a more wealthy part of the city it’s crazy how outside Cabrini Green it was all really nice but inside it was nothing but poverty and gangs.
cool history, but i fail to see how the high rise is responsible for the crime and deplorable conditions of the PJs. i stayed down the street from a 2 story low rise PJs in my early 20s and they were just as gang infested and violent. i have been to East St. Louis in some low rise PJs and there were murders there almost daily. im curious as to the explanation that the height of the building somehow affects the behavior of the occupants. in many cities around the world people live in high rises but they dont turn to sellin dope and bangin. in New York, San Fran, Austin etc people pay top dollar to live in a high rise building. if anyone has any input on that feel free to HMU.
i think it depends on how they are maintained. Im from NY and i have friends who live in sevral housing projects in Manhattan and the Bronx some are infested with roaches gangs and are poorly maintained some are clean and spotless and policed better. I think it Depends on the area and how much effort a city puts in them.
People, like all other animals, behaviors are heavily dependent upon their social conditions. The moving of jobs to the suburbs along with the lack of funding for education and laws preventing home ownership created the conditions where crime festered. One of the most devastating regulations the housing authority imposed on tenants was the requirement that no family with an "able bodied male over 18" could live there. Many Black men left their families in order for them to have shelter, which resulted in a large % of fatherless homes. As young boys now had no male guidance along with a broken education and economic system, the result is an increase in crime.
Well the USA is stupid for not giving proper education to minorities and then minorities do stupid shit. I'm not American btw, I'm from South-Eastern Europe (aka the Wild West of Europe).
Two words - Athens Charter. Personaly I think it works, I mean High-rise buildings. Just look how it works in europe (specialy in central europe) and in, but in order to work, those condos must be literally as Athens charter says - with big open green spaces, where people can socialize, with addition of some small busineses here and there. I live in one of the huge hausing projects from '70 that were built in Poland, and by the huge I mean public housing for 30 000 residens, and it's allmoust self-sufficient, with parks, small shops and restaurants and good public transportation system that allows you to communicate with the rest of the city. Really high-rise buildings are not bad if they are made properly from the start :) Anyway, great vid.
Public high rise building are ugly and depressing especially in eastern and central Europe, Pubic housing is great but in the standards of western Europe and US not Eastern Europe. Like brownstones in the US.
For Eastern and Central Europe it is just a question of modernization and good maintenance. See what Czechs and Germans with soviet houses. They are not a state of art (and they should not be. It is mass and cheap house solution) but they are decent enough varlamov.ru/ 1887136.html varlamov.ru/ 1592678.html . Not a ghetto like in the video
hmmm, i have some theory about it. Both in Europe and US those "projects" are rather smale scale developments - like 10 Blocks grouped together with out any "human" infrastructure aroud it, no parks, no shops etc. In the east it was more of a city within a city. It was planned in opposition to dens 19th and 18th century city centers. Ofcourse it's not that, those blocks are perfect - because thay are not. In the begining of '90s no one wanted to live there, but due to trasmormation, lack of new buildings and other alternatives people were "forced" to live in those blocks. Previously government run housing associations into privat or semi-private ones, that gather for revitalization and now you can admire the resolt. It took more 20 years but in my opinion it was worth it. And think here is the solution - you need time, patience and will of people.
Poo SeeEater me too but low income projects do not create revenue and are set up to fail the working poor . I find that people (who need it) benefit from living in an apartment with the help of section 8 less crime , drugs and gangs
Peyton Bell Because theres an overwhelming chance you will never be rich living in the USA. Self made rich people are extremely rare. Majority of people who claim to be self made were given huge loans from rich family members. So unless you make fire art or have family that are millionaires, you wont get that house.
I grew up in a high-rise or as we call it in Sweden "miljonprogramsområde" that was planned in a such way that the streets between the apartments were car-free filled with only pedestrian routes. The apartments were built on an evelated ground so the underground section of the apartment was really a huge garage to fit in all 7k residents' cars and motor vehicles. Eventhough I'm not a fan at all of high-rise housing projects I must acknowledge the fact that the area where I grew up was planned in a great way to allow people to meet and greet and socialize everyday. Between each row of apartment blocks, parks and recreation areas were available. You could cycle through the entire apartment complex area without having to cross a single automotive road and just to the outskirts of the complex were forests and a local shore with a marina. The area is called Fisksätra, it lies on the outskirt of Stockholm and was built in the 70's as a part of the Swedish government's million programme intitiative with the intended purpose to build 1 million residential apartments within 10 years. This area does not ofc have a great reputation after all since it's a social housing area, but now after watching this video i realized how well-planned it was in terms of accessibility and maintenance.
Ah you forgot how government initially got those white families into the suburbs not their money or a want to leave the city and what really kept other races out of the suburbs. If this video is ever revamped or updated a good resource is "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein. Other wise it was informative.
Yes, I definitely want to revisit this topic from the angle of redlining and other racist housing policies. Had to save something for another video. :)
It’s so amazing to me that people will talk bad about a community but not acknowledge what makes it that way. Since the beginning people living in the projects were discriminated against. There was no proper maintenance on these buildings, people were living in poverty and conditionings people wouldn’t want their animals living in. There were lack of resources for these people. Then the crack pandemic with continued racial injustices. Don’t ignore the real issues that create the real problems people! It’s not right
Thanks for shining a light on a system, that is ridged to put minorities in unfair disadvantage... that have long lasting effect, for generations to come.....
@@genli5603 Gen Li, I would expect you, to feel like that. Especially how your people act towards my people. I'm guessing you're Chinese. are you aware that in china, blacks are be discriminated against, being kicked out of housing, being banned from stores, China investing in Africa and taking advantage of its weak economy. From all the looting from Europeans and now china... wake up or stop acting ignorant to what's going on.....
Fantastic video. They are all simple to understand, plus educational, and I'm very interested in learning about all these topics that you talk about. Great job
Tons of public high rise buildings in Singapore and they do fine. It's not the buildings, it's the people. If Robert Taylor Homes where full of Singaporeans it would have been seen as a success.
Just saw this video and I would love to see a version of this based on New York/Brooklyn/Queens models. They are one of the few places where projects are still unchanged
marcus7564 I think the modern american suburbs look really boring to live in. At least here in Europe you have pubs/bar/coffeshops where you can get drunk and return safely to your house that's located across the street
Isn't it ironic that in some large cities- whites are moving back into the urban areas? What -the suburbs w/their "cookie cutter" houses are not good enough anymore? Hi-rises are Concrete Jungles.......
University of Oregon has always (since its founding in 1914) had its School of Architecture and Allied Arts (now the College of Design) "under one roof".
Harrison, do an image search for "banlieue"... You will see depressing brutalistic high-rise after brutalistic high-rise. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue
Obviously, you've been living under a rock! This is usually the case with some humans - oh that affects those ppl over there, not my problem. Or, out of sight, out of mind!
Dont blame the projects. Its a people issue. Commies built same ones here in Eastern Europe and they are nice, clean, apartment owners invested in recostrutions of whole building blocks, individuals invested in replacement of old widows to new double paned glass etc.. noone is destroying their properties and they appreciate in value..
@@pinktoes3875 Crime had nothing to do with blacks being denied bank loans,investment opportunities and the ability to move to better neighborhoods, but keep ignoring the truth, reaching and making up excuses 😂🤦♀️
Last time I posted a video, I had 600 subscribers. Thanks to all of the new subscribers out there!
Well deserved.
Keep posting man, this is a wonderful channel, and I don't have nearly enough videos to go through.
Its an interesting topic and the videos are well made. Ive suscribed yesterday after seeing a bunch of them in one sitting.
You are doing really great work, and I am personally very interested in subjects like this.
I am sure you're gonna keep growing!
If I may ask, I would be interested in this type of subject: building whole city blocks, not just public housing, but also schools, hospitals, shops, industrial places, like in USSR and other examples, are they as bad as public housing or not?
American city planning seems to mesh with racism frequently
It's up to individuals to keep there living situations clean, and crime free
Chris Pacheco true but what happens when they don’t have the means to do just that?
blame the racist democrats who destroyed communities that once housed ethnic minorities which also tried to become wealthy...
Mr Upgrade they will have to work more or strive for more than partying and sex
@@iamcleaver6854 - yes deporting people stolen from their land would have make a lot of sense 😬
I grew up in a council house (i.e. UK public housing) and so did most of my extended family. It gave us housing security; a good, responsive landlord; and a sense of community. A police officer lived in one of the houses and conflict resolution usually stopped at talking to someone's mom.
All that to say: the problem isn't with public housing whatsoever. It can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector simply cannot and does not want to, it sets a standard that private landlords have to compete with, and it gives people security and the ability to live near schools, family, services.
The US' demonization of projects - at a time where housing is one of the greatest universal issues for its major cities and homelessness/housing insecurity is rampant - is unfortunate and misses the mark. Structural racism, ongoing economic and racial segregation, the distribution of public resources, etc. are and always were the issue.
Combined with having a "beggars can't be choosers" approach to public housing - wherein residents are simply expected to accept whatever top-down vision some planner or architect dreams up - those influences doom a growing necessity to failure.
"It can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector simply cannot and does not want to, it sets a standard that private landlords have to compete with, and it gives people security and the ability to live near schools, family, services." But, if the private sector must compete with public housing ,and public housing can provide housing at a level and cost that the private sector cannot, then doesn't that drive all the private land-lords out of business?
@@Sewblon The shit ones - yes. It was mostly the good ones that were around, back when the UK still had council housing.
@@rexstout8177 So what you meant was, public housing provides housing at a level and cost that some private land-lords cannot provide. If it provided it at a level and cost that no private land lords could provide, then even the good ones would go out of business.
Good points. I will take issue with one though. That of "some vision planners and architects dreamt up" It was local and central gov visions not planners (something doesn't pay any attention to these days) and definitely not architects who have no political influence whatsoever.
If its the aesthetics you are referring to however, then yeah architects have a lot to answer for. However, we can't blame architects for coming up with a cheaper more efficient solution to public housing, that governments then implement half heartedly or without understanding it.
@@Sewblon yes it would drive private land lords out of business. but that should be the goal as private landlords almost never put in more money than all their tenants.
and what moral right does a landlord have to force someone to be in debt to them just to live there, at a certain you basically don't own it anymore as the money you've paid into the property pales in comparison to what the tenants have put in.
High-rise public housing projects actually works very well in Asia like China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Apartments sold to the middle-class in Asia seemed to create cleaner and safer communities compared to the alley slums of unplanned urbanization.
@Adam Buentello exactly!! And they work and live together as a team and family, and they all get along... not many in America can do any of that.
@Krok Krok The OP said "Asia" NOT "east Asia"
And in Singapore too.
Also, rich people live in cities in basically every country besides the United States. Suburbia is America's thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it does keep all the poorer people in cities, in these high density housing areas.
@@eitkoml Exactly, high rise housing works well in the US, you can build two identical towers and one will be a luxury high rise and the other will be a slum depending on who lives in each building.
The issue was policing and maintenance, not the projects themselves.
Which is what was stated in the video.
Maintenance IS part of a project and needs to be properly planned for.
What you mean, I guess, are the substance / buildings themselves, which is true.
Thing is high rise buildings often are build in response to / are a symptom of other issues - here (as becomes apparent in the video) racism and suburbs (=focus of the "market" on what housing is most profitable and not on housing that would be needed or efficient).
And as long the underlining problems are not addressed - I fear - high rise housing (the affordable ones - not prestige projects at least) will often be the cheapest "not actually a solution" solution.
@@CinereousDove They are building a lot of 10-16 story human coops in the cities in Russia. Which is kinda unlogical, giving fact that it`s the biggest country on globe.
Naw, anytime u have that much poverty in such a small area crime should be expected...
@@hurricane8634 the fact that this has 8 likes is disturbing
Tf in eastern europe these housing projects are super common
Yeah I’ve seen one in Poland the walls are thick as hell im pretty sure there built to withstand bombs
@@alek488 half the population of Poland lives in houses like that, it's really common because our country was complitely destroyed and milions of people lost their living space. It was the easiest way for the government to give them any type of housing.
Yes, but they house regular people, not just the poorest of the poor, because you lived under communism. Therefore, they are, ironically, less horrible because you don't have only the dregs of society in them.
Especially in balkans
Same in the Balkan. I mean they still construct new mid-high rise buildings in my city. I live in a new 8 story building.
Low rise housing projects wasn't a good idea either.
Town houses are a bad idea. Population density will always be too low for public transport to be efficient. You would have to drive to the nearest grosary store or coffeshop. The best solution is what they are doing in northen Eueope now. 5-9 floor appartment buildings with closed off inner gardens without cars.
Council estates here in the UK would be considered low rise. They where basically entire new towns build from scratch and at the time where considered the way forward. Half the country's city centers where obliterated in WW2 and a lot of people where living in slums.
These new council estates where modern and had things that people had never had before. Like an indoor toilet and central heating.
The problem was that most of these estates where build miles out of the city in the countryside and with little to no transport links effectively isolating the people who lives there and making it significantly harder to get to the city for work.
Also these estates where initially intended to have people from all levels of society living there. From butchers to bankers to bin men to doctors.
This was changed to only the most needy. To only the poor.
So you ended up with a situation where all the poor where stuck in one place miles from the city, isolated from the rest of society and cut off from job opportunities.
Needless to say the estates quickly became shitholes.
Shame really. It actually could have worked well.
That is why we should build mixed developments: apartments and offices in on place. Denser communities allow more opportunities for the locals and for bossiness. I have lived in the UK and I have to say that those suburban chav districts are a pain to live in. No shops nearby. Whole streets of identical houses...
Iam Cleaver Why do you have a Russian empire flag? 😂 In my opinion, it is best to have neighborhoods that are mixed in terms of hight. The higher must range between 5 and 20 stories like it is in Moscow.
@@xxxxxx-br6ix Why would it? Your assuming the town you built is somehow shit and undesirable and unable to function like any other town.
It's one possible outcome.
It could go the other way and become overly gentrified.
Or it could be just like any other town.
But we are not going to do that by starting out assuming it's going to be a shithole.
As a city planner in Auckland, New Zealand,I love this series. But to be fair mate, there is nothing wrong with well designed high rises, especially with good proximity to public transport. Brutalism is the problem.
True!
If only your higher ups/the central government/residents would agree with you there instead of allowing sprawl over significant horticultural land like they did in the Unitary Plan recently. Although part of the problem has to be developers who feel there’s less risk in suburban development I suppose. I’d have loved to be a fly in the wall for that whole Unitary Plan consultation process.
Its not Brutalism it's 'heroic' architecture! ;)
Post-modern architecture is ruing the WESTERN WORLD. Brutalism needs to be banished. We need our culture back
But its so Metal!
In Tukey, if you live in a high rise building close to the city center, it means you are rich. Poor people live in suburbs in detached houses. Only super rich lives in detached houses which are close to the city center and have a good neighboorhood.
And now increasingly it's also true in the US. Now there are some luxurious high rise residential skyscrapers across the country. And increasingly ppl living in downtown neighborhoods are like the highest earners. So on the flip side, private, market rate & luxurious high rise housing is actually quite successful here in the US. This market has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and still shows an awful amount of potential to grow...
Some countries change. In US you can live inside or outside the city being a rich person. Outside the city center there are big houses and mansions for the rich lifestyle and inner city condos and penthouses. Also, both areas has lower class properties.
Exact same thing in Brazil
@@caetanobonamigo6597 Exactly,.only in Brazil the city centre itself is usually degraded. But neighbouring districts are usually attractive to middle ans upper class dwellers.
@@davidfreeman3083 parts of cabrine green is actually replaced with high rise condos
NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) is one of the last to still maintain hi-rise projects (largely because they house a million of the city's 8 million residents), but it is plagued with problems largely because of divestment over the past 30-40 years, sloppy bureaucracy and financial mismanagement. If you live in NYC you know that the City of New York itself is the city's worst slum-lord. We cannot do like other cities did and tear down our hi-rise projects - too many live there - but we need to fix what we have. Looking back in hind-sight, many of the hi-rise projects never should have been built in the first place. Many organic urban communities were destroyed because of that and highway construction.
Agreed. The existing public housing in New York needs to be completely rebuilt to be reintegrated with their neighborhoods and existing street grid, but they definitely still need to be in high rise towers. That's because nearly all of new housing development in NYC is in towers. NYC has the density to support it.
on the positive side... rats in nyc are cat size so u never run out of protein
There's still dozens of high-rise projects all over Philly. Julien Houses, Wilson Park, WestPark, Fairhill. Some were torn down in the 90s.
Honestly, if New York City can’t reasonably maintain all the units that it has, (HUD is breathing down its neck over this issue,) then it should consider tearing down 5-10% of its public housing units in order of structural deterioration and shore up the remainder, irrespective of geography or perceived infamy.
I don’t understand how people could believe housing poor people in VERY expensive places is a good idea. Their quality of life would be much better somewhere that better suits their productive output. They could afford to live without being tools of the democrats who stack and pack poor people in and keep them dependent so they have a permanent underclass of cheap votes to maintain their power.
I loved my high rise housing projects --1950s. Marble Hill Projects in the Bronx.. veteran's subsidized originally. It takes a Village. Each building had 14 floors. Neighbors looked after each other. We had elevators.. though they frequently broke down. Over years, the projects became multi-cultural.
Years ago, your right marble hill projects was one of the best, as was Throggs Neck houses. And Palham houses. Our wonderful government CHANGED all of that when they started moving in people who can't appreciate a nice place to live. These people destroyed property as well as brought negativity and crime to these once beautiful places . Then, our federal government stopped financially supporting these complexes, which, of course, started to fall apart. Add horrible people, no funding, lazy workers, and you now have public housing.
Projects became multicultural, aka to house non-whites at the bottom of the pyramid.
Y’all don’t know high rise housing projects until you’ve seen Singapore
high rises were built to accommodate the growing population. More people take up land space so they build buildings vertically to save land space.
Singapore forced coexistence by not letting racial or ethnic enclaves develop. Quotas were put in place that every housing bloc be proportional to ethnic and racial make-up of the whole nation.
Can you imagine if America did that? I'd miss the Chinatowns ambience, but it might force harmony. Imagine every city block being the same racial proportion of the whole US, or even of the state, county, or city.
@@리주민 Something that might play an even bigger role is the economic integration of public housing. In Singapore 80% of the population lives in public housing, that means poor, pretty much up to upper class individuals all living together. I think a trap lots of countries, and especially America fall into is viewing public housing as purely a poverty program as opposed to providing a necessary public good.
nah, hong kong.
As a Singaporean living in hdb flats, it's nice and comfy. There isn't really that much crime here and it's relatively peaceful with amenities nearby!
I'm living in a well maintained high rise. The view is awesome and the apartment nice, nothing to complain about. If you don't maintain the building and utilities, put *only* lowest income families together who are already struggling to survive, well that's just a recipe for disaster. Nothing to do with the actual high rise, though.
Right !
Look at NYC Billionaires Row with all those expensive high-rise apartments . Also Stuyvesant Town housing complex on the east side of Manhattan that looks like any other public housing Project complex but the big difference is the maintenance of the property , the mix incomes , and it haves its own security patrols .
The problems we see today were created by people attitudes towards other people . Problems that could have been avoided or solved by humans and it is nothing ordained by supernatural forces beyond our control .
But why it didn't work. I was listening the whole time, but you didn't answer it.
Skodra
Does he have to spell it out for you?
BLACKS
@@vespa9566 I would appreciate it xD
It did work. Whatever projects were being conducted in those projects to these ppl by the powers that be, worked perfectly.. And that, is precisely why "it didn't work...."
not the title of the video
@@vespa9566 Nothing like a racist response. It wasn't "blacks" it was "poor" combined with the fact once these places were built, they lacked proper upkeep by the city as well as proper policing.
I would love to live in a high rise, that said, The Projects were some of the ugliest buildings ever built.
Likely cheapest cost, agreed
You should see Soviet and East Asian low income high rise buildings...
Honestly, having 4 stories or 5 floors (ground level + 4 levels above that, optionally another level below to make it 6 floors/levels, with 1m tall windows on the top of the wall, for the building's utilities to get some natural light, for when maintenance and repairs are needed) is the best, because you don't need an elevator. Sure, an elevator helps, but even without it you can still get from the top level to the bottom level. Also, they should have a thick metal roof (which should be either aluminium or weathering steel, with the weathering steel much cheaper than the aluminium and they're both rust-resistant). A few buildings should be allowed to have 10 or 15 stories (levels above the ground)
The roof doesn't even need to be big enough to fit underneath it, but you can make it as the 4th level if you want, and sell less units due to reduced space, but instead give those at least one of those units a view of the whole city and the rest of the units a view of two halves of the city with the side parts not visible. Ideally have the balcony with windows from half the height of the wall to the top of the wall near where the wall meets the roof, and have them open and have clothes lines so you can dry your clothes in the sun, have the balconies larger so people can sunbath there or stay under direct sunlight while still staying inside your house, and so people can grow food there with room to move between layers of crops on both sides.
Oh, and use reflective-metal pipes going from the side walls to the inside of the rooms with frosty plastic and a slider which can cover the frosty plastic, to have "sun tunnels" or use natural sun to light up the interior when its sunny outside, to save up on lighting inner rooms like the toilet or the hall, and for the stairway used by the whole building you can have a large plastic lens and a large pipe going from the roof top to the underground, with the same system of frosty windows on each level illuminating from the top of the stairway and from right underneath the stairway for the other stairway. At most, you might need 2 such sun tunnel pipes for the stairway, one for each side, to make sure both sides get enough sunlight to not need other lights during the day, and you can have a tiny solar panel which to keep the electric lights turned off at night and which to turn them back on when it gets dark.
And you can also zone the ground level as a commercial area, or at least zone an area right around the building as commercial area while still allowing the commercial area to be technically part of the same building or using the same wall even if you need to have a thicker wall to have both the thickness of the residential area and the thickness of the commercial area added together, so you can have shops on the ground floor so people can buy their groceries from there, so they don't need a car to get the daily necessities. Oh, and all commercial structures which require heating or baking things would require to have two heat pipes going to the top floor, one outside the city block for use in the summer, or when hot-enough, and another one inside the city block for use in the winter to also heat up some rooms passively. And the air going inside the building should be filtered, including using a water filter (using a pump to send the gas through a pipe spiraling inside a bucket and with tiny holes angled slightly clockwise and towards the outside, to get the gas bubbling, and having it at an angle helps with mixing the gas and water together, to make a sludge which can be harvested and turned into tar or something else, as a byproduct of keeping the inside pipes and the air around the building clean.
And use cement formed in molds to make the facade (outer shell) of the building look fancy and welcoming, as opposed to a flat wall of the concrete jungle. And the facade doesn't even need to be thick, it can be at most 5 cm or 2 inch in thickness, if using plastic fibers to keep it together (i.e. a plastic-wire mesh acting like an armature), for the bigger pieces (i.e. the whole level or more), or half of that (2.5 cm or 1 inch) for smaller pieces (i.e. strips around 2x4 yards or 2x4 meters or smaller). Each building can have a different set of facades, even if the only difference between two nearby buildings is one of the molds for the facades having a different model, or part of a mold being different (if the molds are modular, i.e. screwing them together before the waxing/oiling/vaselineing/lubing before the pour).
This is how city blocks could be made to feel welcoming again. And they could still be made to look unique, by varying the colors of some parts, without altering the structure by much. i.e. one building could have the accents made with cement which looks like granite, another one with cement which looks like marble (including the marbling in both), yet another one made to look like dolomite, another one made to look and add a bit of cement pigments to the mixture, and you get even more possible variety. And if you use different cement mixtures for different depths of the mold, and let them cure (at least partially) before adding more cement, you can get even more color variety, especially if you also angle the molds to get some other parts colored, like adding highlights and shading to the pieces (i.e. a brighter color towards the sky and a darker color towards the ground).
And being able to customize the outside of the building could help give the residents a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a community, and maybe encourage them to help make or maintain the outside of the building. Getting the whole building re-painted every decade or so wouldn't cost that much, and repairing the broken parts would help spot problems before they become too big.
Whenever there's a plan to help the poor, there will always be predators to take advantage of any loopholes.
(edit) "Fun Fact": Ladders from fire trucks can extend no higher than the 8eight floor.
@WorldFlex my prof once said that some colleges of his would not stay in hotel rooms higher than the 10th floor so that in case of fire they could escape via the balcony
As a Hong Konger I am now scared to enter my home on the 9th floor.
@@_qwe_fk_1700 it's the law for federal workers
@@Nicholas-f5 i dont think that there is a law about that
Very fun
I've lived in nice 6 story apartment buildings in the Seattle area, and a practical problem not even hinted at with this is the slow elevator problem: to save money, they tend to have horribly inefficient elevators and not enough of them in such places, and that's in "luxury" apartment buildings. I wonder how many and how slow the elevators were in the projects, when they worked? When it's hard to quickly get in and out, human nature is to not do it very often due to too much friction, even if all your neighbors are friendly. The larger and taller a building, the less likely you are to know your neighbors which leads to a lack of social cohesion and friendliness because people only see each other when they have no real choice getting in and out of the building.
You forgot the car. You can't live in a suburb without one and the rise of car ownership and the suburb are closely related. Cities are always offer major job opportunities, especially for non-educated workers. So where should they live, in slums? High rise housing is just logical if there's no alternative for transportation.
Good point!
I think you may have COMPLETELY missed the entire premise of this video.Perhaps you should watch it again because if my instincts serve me right your opposition has more to do with a defense of the white suburbs than any real concern for working people.
MRTN13 it jumped from 20m to like 150m over night
We need high rise housing in SF and the bay area. Property values are way too high and it's starting to choke or at least severely pervert the growing tech industry. Walk around the bad neighborhoods in SF and you'll see the slums today are alive and well. Meanwhile the tech industry continues to grow and the wealthy become wealthier. This is not a safe situation.
I live in a 9-story house in a Western-European mixed-income suburb. 15 minutes by subway to the city centre. And that is pretty average over here.
It is not about the high-rise but about city planning and politics.
When the topic of public housing comes up, I often think about how Singapore did it so successfully when America failed so spectacularly. In Singapore public housing worked due to a combination of good policies. That included highly competent government oversight (the ruling party there prides itself on being known as the ones who housed everyone, so they have a large incentive to maintain the quality of housing), constant upkeep and remodeling, and making its residents buy instead of rent (well, these are technically 99-year leases, but that’s besides the point). Additionally, the government create units in each building that were affordable and desirable to its poor, middle, and upper classes, respectively. Then, when placing people in housing, they made sure it mixed people of different ethnicities (there was a big divide between ethnic Chinese and ethnic Malays in the city at the time) and socio-economic classes were together to prevent certain areas from becoming more desirable than others and ensure social cohesion. The government also worked hard to ensure there were ample public transit connections between the housing projects and places of business, so its residents had ready access to employment. It was as much of a work of social engineering as it was actual engineering.
Basically, this is the opposite of what the US government did. Once built, public housing projects were not maintained or policed. These projects were often built in the peripheries of cities, and without decent public transportation. This, combined with most of its residents already being poor blacks, and this invariably helped perpetuate the cycle of poverty. The projects became seen as a place of crime, drug use, and poverty. America’s history or racism and classism lead to the belief that these projects were a failure due to the failures and inferiority of its residents, ignoring the absolutely awful government planning and mismanagement that went into creating the projects and subsequently leading them to fall into decay. Though, in defense of city governments, the decay of public housing also coincided with huge budget crises of the 1960’s and especially the 1970’s, where deindustrialization and white flight turned cities like Detroit from a vibrant manufacturing center to, well, Detroit. The federal government did little to help.
America just seems to always fail at implementing large scale social welfare programs, or only ever commits to them half-heartedly.
Luckily today, there seems to be some progress being made with housing. It’s becoming increasingly popular for the government to subsidize private housing developers to create affordable housing units. These are usually built as low-rise condos or town homes and are integrated into more affluent/middle class communities, or for every few normal housing units, one unit is an affordable unit. These units are actually quite nice, if modest, and are designed to blend into their communities, rather than be towering eyesore that advertise to everyone “the poor live here.” For Americans it seems, affordable housing is more achievable when done quietly through government subsidies to private developers than when done as massive public works projects.
You hit the nail on t he head, you have my vote!
Great info.
American govt is a failure. The People are trying to get rid of them.
The 60,70,80 year old plus members are the problem makers and consistent in their problem making and ineptitude.
They left the under 60 members with nothing but corruption and ineptitude to follow as a plan.
And potential new members are wasting their time because the system is already designed for failure; not success.
🤷😬🙄
I love the part where you remind everyone that the American right loves to blame social or gasp socialist policies failing on a personal flaw or moral failing instead of blaming the ruling government at the time. The Government is like we failed and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Yes in order to have adequate funding not saying I agree with this or anything but yes, the middle class and upperclass must want and desire to live there. I've been homeless before. I know what it's like to always be around homeless people. It's way better to be around your friends or a healthy support system that's for sure.
To be honest, the failure of the project housing in the United States was simply part of the entire failure that was the welfare system and the war on poverty. It's one of those policies that sounds good on paper and plays to people's emotions in that its saying, "yay we're helping the poor," but in reality what it created was a system where you were worse off if you sat right outside the threshold to receive welfare benefits creating zero incentive to work towards furthering your financial status and improving your living situation which in turn created a stagnant culture within poor communities, inner city communities particularly. Plus, it incentivized single motherhood by giving more benefits to single mothers which in turn made a father's responsibilities to his children in essence obsolete. In 1960 around 2/3 of black children were living in two parent households, but after the beginning of the war on poverty single parenthood within the black community began to skyrocket. Then there is the obvious increase of crime and everything else from project housing. Obviously there are plenty of other factors that have effected poor communities, particularly in the inner city, but I don't think the effect the welfare state had should be ignored.
The main goal of the welfare state in most peoples minds would probably have been not to make life better as a poor man, but to help people get out of poverty entirely, I mean that is the "American dream" obviously, but what the welfare state was essentially like is giving a homeless man on the side of the road money. All your doing is giving him what he needs to continue the bad habits which are keeping him homeless in the first place be it alcoholism, serious drug addiction, etc. and money can't help to improve whatever other issues that person may be dealing with like mental health issues. To actually help a homeless man you have to give him the help he really needs. In hindsight, the welfare state feels as if it was genuinely intended as a program that was meant to keep poor people poor even if it actually wasn't
A 99 year lease is not a purchase. The state owns the property.
I don't think the problem with projects was necessarily form (height/density), but rather context (location/land-use). High-rise public housing can work if it's spread out across various neighbourhoods and integrated with mixed uses (retail, employment, recreation)
But why do high rises fail? Why can't people live there in peace like in Hong Kong or Singapore? What make Americans (of any race) unable to get along in a high rise situation?
Callie Masters Because theyre low income, some in the housings use illegal ways to get money. The US is different from singapore. Way more crime, guns are easy to get, and gangs are more rampant.
Callie Masters In Finland are build many apartment block building areas near cities all the time, and they are coming increasily popular when people move from countryside low rise houses to urban areas. Its just easy to just rent new apartment than owning low rise suburban house.
Because these projects are uninspired prison-like monoliths, designed in eras where racism often took priority over good planning. They're too often improperly serviced and have emergency issues like inadequate fire preparation.
I guess you never heard of the "kowloon walled city" in China. It was the largest housing project in the world, a pure shit hole. New York and San francisco have high rise condos/apt over 20 stories high that "work" because they're occupied by rich and upper middle-class.
They cant live in peace bcos there is lots of drugs and guns
Singapore was successful in their high rise housing.
Seems the US and the UK merely failed to implement what to do next: integrate these housing projects to mass transit and build amenities and accompanying facilities nearby.
@@Tolpuddle581 Thamesmead was not connected to transit networks and now jurisdiction is given to the private sector because, well, Thatcher. Of course it will fail.
Vienna has also done well with public housing, some of it high-rise
thing is though a lot of residents of council towers in the UK would actually quite like to live there if councils were actually given money to maintain them
There are estates in London that had their own facilities, shops, public spaces, close to public transport and they still failed. Whole place fallen into disrepair and squalor. Councils kept concentrating problem tenants in certain towers and estates, worsening the problem.
@@flyingpiggie979 just curious what do you mean by "problem tenants".
I'm currently reading a book called "The Color of Law" which covers a lot about housing and segregation during this period. Recommend to anyone who's wants to get into more detail.
I really gotta get to reading that book
Who is the Author name ?
Also the fact that you have to be “referred” in order to buy or rent, when they really just mean “you have to know or be white”.
I love my dad for risking his life doing security in these buildings when I was young just to take care of us
high rises were built to accommodate the growing population. More people take up land space so they build buildings vertically to save land space.
@@joshdaniel8729 that reply is astoundingly irrelevant
Lies wasn’t no security in the projects 🤣🤦🏾♀️
@@jkknbvvbbj2574 exactly, I lived there so I know.
@@ms.b14571 yes there was, every project or building doesnt have on, there sill projects in nyc that still has it all depends on ssize and how close it is to a "good" place.
The removal of Dad’s by the system helped destroy many of these project communities.Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis initially admitted needy women and children only.
M Burk what they know about that?youre absolutely right though
democrats know free money no matter how small the amount is like crack.
kyuketsukitomodachi No, they didn't do any of that. These families were only told that if there was no male figure in the household above the age of 17, they would be eligible for double the handouts. If you did a little bit of research, you can find that many of the governmental agencies actually had requirements of their bureaucrats to express these points to each and every applicant. There were even flyers and mail notices which brought up these points.
Oh, and let's not forget that you can actually hear LBJ mention all of this as part of his strategy in the recordings he had of the oval office and have long since been released to the American public. His entire "war on poverty" was designed to enslave impoverished black voters to the Democratic Party by gradually worsening their living situation and increasing their reliance upon governmental welfare assistance.
No that is exactly what the government did -- destroyed poor families across the country.
Unlitedsoul but how does that force anyone to do anything? I agree the democrats have turned inner cities into voter plantations. However the responsibility ultimately falls on the people who choose to give up freedom for financial security.
You glossed over the part of why they failed. There was stigma by non public housing recipients, causing the building to be occupied by only low income residents. This increased disrepair and crime. High rises were not the problem. The lack of integration to the community was the problem. Subsidized high rise buildings with minimum % of section 8 distributed throughout would be a much better solution. Furthermore, residents that escaped the need for public housing would need to leave their existing community to find new housing. Upward mobility in the same neighborhood is an important part of building a strong community.
Thanks for adding to the conversation. Good info!
Rent control would also help
Section 8 simply spreads out crime. Several years ago, there was a good article showing this happening around Memphis in the liberal magazine “The Atlantic”.
@@AmbientMorality Actually no. If u control the rent too much landlords would just stop putting their units onto the market, and buy/develop far less units for rental, causing a severe shortage.
@@davidfreeman3083 sounds like an argument for public housing. A competent local government can develop more housing regardless.
Thank you for :
1. Not putting terrible dubstep/music over everything.
2. Being clear in speech
That is all. Video is great! I live in Denmark, so why should I give a F' about this topic? I don't know! You made it interresting and I feel wiser after seeing this video - so thanks :)
Are there no projects in Denmark?
Beka Shakur Yes there is. I too live in Denmark and the area called Brøndby Strand (Brøndby Beach) is a great example of these high rise projects
@@TheQwertyNinja What are the conditions like? Anything like those in the US?
@@tannwich5350 Nothing is like US!!! I have seen cities in Iraq that look better than some parts of the US (and not even exagerating here!) The difference with Europe, is that racism isn't as visible as in USA where the whole system is build on segregating communities and discriminating people just by their skin tone! In most European nations, you can actually even go to college even if you're from a low income family. I would say come to Europe in the summer and travel different countries since everything is nearby with a train. It broadens the way you see the world. And not just Europe for that matter.
@@ABC-ABC1234 Interesting, and wouldn't I love to visit Europe! Here, lots of low income 1st-gens go to college, and are actively recruited and supported, but I understand it is easier financially, if not academically, in Europe.
The only race-indifferent place I've ever been to is Toronto. It was so peaceful, and people of every color and country of origin (like the Lincolnwood area in Chicago - 102 languages spoken at my kid's school) - but I have to say I missed the high energy and vibrancy that comes from having the strong, independent black, Latino/a, and other communities here. All the black people blended in, which is nice, but there seemed to be little if any actual black culture. I realize there are horrible parts to the segregation - which is getting so much better, especially during Obama's term, except for the poverty - but I wish we could keep the good parts and that something great emerges from it all.
Also, from what I can tell, the worst places to live are the Kowloon Walled City in China, the favelas of Brazil and Manila, and the slums of Mumbai. I, a relatively privileged sort, (I haven't had to kill or sell drugs to eat yet) would probably not last a week in any of these, nor in NYCHA.
Looks like Soviet apartment blocs
Yeah. They're one and the same.
There was always a shortage but once you got one the rent was very. When the Soviet Union collapse people inherited their apartments and no one was evicted.. In the US today a Tsunami of eviction is approaching....
Is kinda the point many of it
minus one thing
That's exactly what they are. And given the time period I wouldn't be surprised if the people designing them were socialists.
Public housing buildings are usually built with shitty materials that fall apart:
1. The bricks aren't fired long enough, so they crack in the winter.
2. The walls are cinderblock, and the builders don't bother to drywall.
3. The windows are made of cheap metal, so they get stuck.
4. The building is placed far from the sidewalk, so it's isolated.
Good list, I would add to number 3. - Window Glass is the thickness of 2 dimes stacked one on top of each other.
1. There is no supervision, though hundreds / thousands of children live there.
2. No removal of tenants who attack others.
3. No stores or needed services on premises.
4. No labor contribution required of tenants, as in co-ops, such as elevator monitoring.
5. No locked entry, as in other high rises / multi-tenant buildings.
@WHATEVER'S CLEVER u want to so bad.... just say the R-word...
When have we ever seen people shoved into warehouses like that? You speak as if you know how you would act if you were shoved into that environment.
If the buildings were placed near the sidewalk, you would complain that they take valuable sunlight away from sidewalks and streets.
The housing projects that Good Times was set in, was also torn down, many years ago.
Cabrini Green
Dy-No-Mite!
One thing the execution of the housing towers project towers was poor.
The high rise complexes that were built lacked a lot of the features of Le Corbusier's original concept.
Instead boring buildings that were pretty much warehouses for people were built and they were poorly policed and maintained.
As a modernist fan it always frustrates me how Jencks among other postmodernists did such a good job of connecting all the problems of social housing of the time: The crime and state of dilapidation to modernist principles and design rather than real causes like segregation, lack of investment, wide unemployment in the 70s, shoddy craftsmanship etc
High rise buildings are nice, if they are about 10 to 20 levels, and very *well spaced from other buildings.*
4 large trees between the buildings is nice to have too !
I would still say anyone would favor high-rise building that never exceed 7 levels at max, and such that avoid long corridors.
And yeah they have to be spaced in some sort of context. If they are spaced individually, just one after another there is something very off putting about them.
Yes they are but oh boy if there's a fire.. May God be with you
It seems stupid to me to build higher than you can walk. An elevator might be nice, but there will be one day when it is broken or they will be a fire. So more then 5 to 7 stories are too much in my view. Personally I don't even like 5 stories because I think thats too gigantic for humans (depending also on the architecture, as Gründerzeit buildings can handle this really good)
a bit off subject. Im a firm believer in "to each his own" but apartment buildings are terrible. In my late teens my family got stuck in one for 8 months, wasn't even a cheap place and We felt robbed of 8 months of our life's. The fact that the walls, floor and ceiling you rent or buy is attached to someone else sickens me. I love my huge yard, garage, deck, porch, driveway and its all mine. I could sleep on the lawn if I wanted. Some people hate having this much to take care of and cant imagine having to worry about all of it but again.. "to each his own"
epSos.de You just described the projects.
I LOVE videos like this, it gives a glimpse into history, even if some parts of it aren't as comfortable as we would like it to be. Thank you very much for making these.
The Modern Investor Do you invest in cryptocurrency?
The Modern Investor fuck u bro u can't tear down the projects in NYC where ppl supposed live at shits expensive boi stfu and check yah privilege
Leo Bukalov is a bluepilled /pol/ack
The Modern Investor As a lover of History Indeed this is a gift for me.
You don't have to live in NYC, one of the most expensive places in the world lol.
I lived in the Robert Taylor projects. My family moved in a year after they were built, I think 1962. I have wonderful memories. Both my parents lived in those slummed neighborhoods as kids prior to the buildings being built. We did move out long before the demolition. The building that I lived in was the very first building torn down.
How were they slummed in the sense…tenements?
You didn't really make clear what's supposedly bad about high rise buildings.
The video also talks about the shift away from high rise public housing and makes it seem as if the type of building had something to do with the crime ridden neighborhoods.
Thanks for the critique -- yes I should have been more explicit about why they were bad.
City Beautiful More like why they are suck in America, while the Asians can live in better quality in their high-rise.
Insert : *crack epidemic of 1970s*
a highrise without maintenance and security breeds crime, creates a sense of loneliness and when a disaster such as a fire or gas leak occurs the number of likely casualties grows exponentially, plus no one wants them in their neighborhood, all this is of course talking about public housing not luxury or upper middle class apartment towers
Not exactly a"deluxe apartment in the sky"
Well definitely not public housing of course. But in the case of private housing that's a different story. Such things are very common now.
Great video! I grew up West of the Chicago suburbs in the '90s, so I've always heard about what a terrible idea high rise public housing was and what a lasting, damaging effect it had on society. My dad (who went to architecture school at one point) had no shortage of ideas about how to improve public housing. I don't live in public housing, but my current housing situation is quite similar to the ideas he described. It's a small complex of low-rise buildings in a decent neighborhood, not far from the center of town. The buildings are well-constructed, but they're obviously old, so rent is super low. We're a mixed tenant population (both ethnically and demographically) and we all hold jobs. It's not a perfect arrangement by any means, but we make it work. I hope the current public housing model provides individuals and families with a similar quality of life.
I love this type of housing structure, in places like Spain for example its beautiful. Its all about keeping the peace in this type of environment for it to work well.
I found this video to be quite informative. I have recently for the first time found it necessary to move into public housing and yes I agree that it is intended for middle class people who are struggling thankfully I qualified because up to that point I and my six-year-old was sleeping on the floor at of my adult children's home until I was able to get back on my feet so I very much appreciate this opportunity for a fresh start... God Bless America 🇺🇸
So glad you have a place for you and your child.God bless you Anita.
So how exactly do you have an adult child and a 6 year old?
UCLAJediKnight
Well, if Anita Richmond is the anonymized screen name for Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, her firstborn child (Prince Charles) was born 14 November 1948 and her youngest (Prince Edward) was born 10 March 1964. Therefore, when Prince Edward turned six in March 1970, Prince Charles would have been 21 if I did the maths correctly (ie, an adult). And it is believed that all four of The Queen’s children have the same baby daddy.
Any other questions?
I was listening the whole way through and I still didn't get a straight answer.
The straight answer is RACIST!
@@KevinBalch-dt8ot well actually no... answer is that it is cheaper and faster to make one high rise instead of many med or low rise ones...
Also i see it easier since it one solid building they dont gotta do different size places and ea apartment is same size and have same details give or take not all bathrooms are on same side or gotta have stairs and elevator to go down anytime or up anytime. so variety details to have in one big like building. compared to any med or small places so gotta make sure all the places are right size and all.
He says it at 1:31, 1:43, 1:49, 2:34, 5:33 that it is white people's fault.
Still hasn’t been answered
At 6:14 thanks for including the Hawthorne Park area in Philadelphia in this video. It's an excellent example of what the original public housing should have been. There used to be high rise public housing on this site but like all of it's day, it fell to neglect and crime and was demolished in 1999. Planners built new homes to match those of the houses already in existence and mixed both public and private housing to mix up the classes. That neighborhood is beautiful and you'd never know most of those homes were public housing. That is how it should have gone in the early 1900s.
i've been to hawthorne park before and i didn't even realize it was public housing until i read your comment! incredible!
I love living in my high rise building in Switzerland. I have a great view, cool and fresh air and because there are many people here, there is good connectivity by road and many shops close by. Although there are a couple other high rise buildings in the vicinity it is not like those blocks but rather with varying heights and shapes. I think that makes a big difference.
@GPAGE actually I am an immigrant with disabilities. That didn’t stop me from being successful. That is Switzerland where anyone can rise if they deliver.
Down with low-income, high rise, public housing projects, and welcome over priced, high-rise condominiums.
Ernest Fox ryte
High rise buildings are being replaced with houses all over the world. They look awful and are bad for your mental health.
@Please and Thank You Does it make a difference WHERE the poor live? It would seem whatever area they went to would be poor, cause, well, poor people live there now, so if they stay or go away...they cant run away from their poverty. Housing plans doesnt solve poverty. Work and managing education and finances do.
While US gave up on high rise resident buildings, Hong Kong embraces it.
there is a lot of space in the US, not so much in Hong Kong
And so has tokyo seoul singapore etc etc
Lit.: While the rest of the world promote public housing, US is demolish them. Is that means the end of public housing is inevitable and future trend? Or is just the America is going backward?
I'm not sure the US gave up on high-rise living at all. There are many going up all over the place- all the time. However, obviously, like this video pointed out, public housing is a different story.
Owen Major yet they don't have the same problem with American public housing.
Very nice video. Want to share some info: I live in Moscow, Russia. Hi-rise buildings were a standard in USSR like one-family houses was a standard in US. But in our case, soviet hi-res buildings didn't become ghettos and are still most common housing solution. The reason for that is, well, there was no house market in USSR ( people waited for years to get flat from state for free), and inhabitants of one building could be from different social stratas. In one building there could live scientists, military officers, workers, alcoholics and antisocial people, people of different nationalities , and people of different age. There could be better micro district, there could be worse micro districts, but, in general, the quality of life was the same.(1990-1998 was a shit time for Russia, but I remember how i was shocked as a kid, how horrible cities were in American movies and how "Candy" beautiful suburbs were ). But now, the situation is changing. Our house development companies went crazy and started to ignore soviet building standards: thinking about profit, they started to build tall houses very close to each other and they don't care about infrastructure (I live in 8 floor tall house in a micro district build in 1960, and i love the fact that everything i need is in 5-10 walk minute, including subway). People buy those flats, but in time, those micro districts will become ghettos... Check this out: varlamov.ru/ 2225584.html varlamov.ru/ 1845663.html
I personally believe, that city, as a complex system, should have different housing solution. The majority of resident house should be medium (4-7 floor tall), as they have best personal comfort/city efficiency balance. But there is a place for big and tall apartment complexes and areas for single-family houses.
I don't support it:
1) Government tries to save house development industry. They say it costs will be payed by investors, but i really doubt that. Highly possible it will be paid from the budget, which is fucked up.
2) There is little details about new houses, new districts and rules, but citizens are forced to make decision now: do they want to join the renovation or not. In Russia we call it "To buy a cat in a bag" - to make a decision without enough information.
3) New houses will have more floors. Government tells that it will be 7 - 11 floor max, but it is hard to believe. It is possible that there could be 20-30 floor buildings.
4) More floors means more pressure on infrastructure. There is little room in kindergardens, schools and hospitals already. More cars on road and crowds in subway.
5) Besides, there already exist government program to demolish old building and construct new houses for families instead. It it a slow program, but it works. They demolish not whole micro district (like new renovation program wants) but house by house.
I'm also from Moscow, but currently live in Minsk :)
There is another economical reason why they're building all these horrible microdistricts: Moscow (and in less degree St. Petersburg) is pretty much the only place in Russia where an average person can have a reasonable salary to sustain a somewhat good quality of life. My speculation is that about 30% of all Russian population is concentrated in Moscow and it's satelites. Demand creates supply. Add here outdated soviet building standartds and people's little knowlage about what is considered a decent housing in the developed world... and we get this. Also I need to add that this housing isn't cheap at all. A two-rooms apartment (it's not the same as two-bedrooms in the US where you also have living room, here you will only have two rooms + kitchen + bathroom/toilet) will cost AT MINIMUM 8,000,000 RUB and an average salary in moscow is about 60,000 RUB a month (if you trust ROSSTAT). As you can see you will need at least 10 years to save all your salary to buy one (a half if you have a working spouse). OR you can get a mortage with 12+% of year interest (as majority of buyers do).
Michael Miriti agreed. I was born in Moscow, and must say that Moscow is a parasite on Russian. All major finance and taxes are concentrated here. We need to decentralized country and make regional economy rise, so people would rather stay there.
chatnoir1224, I was born and raised in the projects in New York City in the late 1960s thought the late 1980s. The projects I grew up in, in the South Bronx used to be a nice place to grow up. There was a mix of poor, working and middle-class families and management was very selective about who they rented to. My family was on a long waiting list to get an apartment and because my parents were married and my father was serving in the Navy in Vietnam, we got one. We had nice playgrounds, basketball and handball courts, and the green spaces were regularly kept up. There was even a police department assigned just for the projects that was run by the New York City Housing Authority. We had it a lot better than some of our neighbors outside the projects who still lived in the old five-story tenement buildings that were typical in New York City. Things took a nosedive in the 80s when control of the projects past from the state of New York to the federal government. That's when the budgets for building maintenance, screening perspective tenants and security were slashed. The crack epidemic was the final nail in the coffin for the projects, in my opinion. It was the first time I had ever heard gunshots fired in my neighborhood and since I was old enough to move away to attend college by that time, I did.
Commenters are correct when they say that the height of the buildings have nothing to do with why the project failed. There are still plenty of high-rise buildings all over New York City to this day that are clean, safe and operating just fine. The differences is that they're provide better (albeit private) security and maintenance. If the state and/or federal government cared about the projects they should have continued to maintain them as was originally intended instead of passing them around like hot potatoes and leaving them to rot.
Thanks for sharing your story. I agree: doesn't matter where which side of Atlantic are we, effective maintenance and diverse population (with majority people from working and middle class ) is the key for success Project/Hi-rise.
It's crazy how much racism is engrained into US society. I have watched a wide range of City Beautiful videos and I can't tell you how many times I've seen racism playing a part in city planning. It's no surprise that things still haven't changed, even today.
That's what you get for importing slaves from Africa two centuries ago.
What part of the world are you from btw?
Racism is every where when you want it to be
Yeah it must have been the evil undercover architect racists. No individual responsibility whatsoever is the cause....... 🤡
@Michael Neal maywood IL?
The video explained why they were built, but made it sound like hi-rise public housing is somehow inevitably doomed to failure, which is absolutely not the case...
High-rise Housing is a good idea that was poorly implemented
That can be said about a few other social institutions of the 20th Century
theres still hundreds of housing projects throughout the 5 boroughs of NYC and I doubt they're going anywhere. It helps keep the homeless rate down
They're super ugly for sure.
Damn we been done dirty always. Good video brother!
Yeah Free housing is doing you dirty, nobody was forced to live there
"Nobody was forced to live there"?! WTF? That is exactly what happened! The video said that banks wouldn't finance them and realtors wouldn't show them houses. Where were they supposed to go? Just buy a tent and camp out on some rich guy's lawn? Do you know how much it costs to move? Do you really expect people to walk to another city? This was before civil rights, remember? Police could arrest PoC for no reason and they'd be stuck in jail, unable to work, and nobody cared. You really think thousands of PoC travelling to new places would be accepted into the local economies without a fuss?
So the problem is not « Corbu », “modernism” or whatever style. But the lack of funding for public social housing. Thanks for the clear demonstration.
Mixed housing and mixed use can create a community that works.
But you cannot force people to mix. You have to make it as attractive, that they see an advantage before they move in.
Good history lesson, but you make it seem as though the new “mixed income” developments that replaced them solved all the housing
problems. In essence, developers eyeing the prime real estate the projects were sitting on were able to make huge profits by leasing apartments to upper middle class white families, while only a fraction of the original, poor, black families living there were able to re-integrate into the buildings. Most of them fell through the cracks and had to relocate to other parts of the city.
Thanks for Sharing!
The reason the projects got demolished was crime, crime, crime,because in the sixties they were shooting at the police from the top floors ,some people has to ruin it for others.
At 4:01. You can see my apartment in the very far upper-right hand corner of this video! That's pretty cool! :D Also, these high-rise housing projects in Two Bridges in Manhattan are not dangerous--the vast majority of the inhabitants there are harmless elderly people. I cross these green parks all the time when I need to go grocery shopping, so Le Corbusier was correct on that count. Having such large swathes of greenery in the middle of the busy, gray city is nice, especially for the old folks who like to while away the time on benches.
1:59 It's official, 1949 had the best neckties.
Where can I find your source or more info on the Chicago city council refusing to building public housing on the outskirts of the city? 5:29
Modernism isn't so bad, but modernist buildings have never been maintained very well. And unlike older buildings, they do not age well.
Ahmed Kazikian who hasnt maintained their buildings?
Ahmed Kazikian modernism kinda is bad (Architecturally)
Common Zenoric I recommend you read up on modernism and learn what it was trying to accomplish. We shouldn’t discount modernism wholesale. (Apologies if you have studied the subject; it’s unclear from your comment alone how versed you are in architectural theory.)
Jj Benz Most older buildings are poorly maintained. Modernist buildings look best when they are PRISTINE.
5:44 Wonder if this was part of the reason Kendrick's dad moved out of Chicago.
"He came from the streets the Robert Taylor Homes
Southside Projects, Chiraq, the Terror Dome
Drove to California with a woman on him and 500 dollars"
- Kendrick Lamar; Duckworth
Watching this makes me angry. I’m just happy that we as black people have come a long way. My mom owned her own home at 23 in the 80s and the house is still in the family. We were taught to strive for better and me and my siblings have accomplished that. Fuck where the government wants you to be. You gotta make your own way out here and we definitely have done that and are still doing it to this day
I agree with and am proud of you.
It sounded like the biggest issues was funding if they went with the cheapest option. They also didn't have the funding to maintain them so if something broke it was broke for a long time. Also, with so many people in such a tight space, I bet there was a long waiting list to get anything done.
It wasn't designed to fail- it failed because all the authorities wanted it to fail.
Marxists Democrats are why
That or black people
No. The authorities wanted the projects to succeed. President Johnson spent billions to build them.
The projects failed because the residents knew that they could never purchase a unit, because it was government property. The residents destroyed them.
Keldon McFarland Citing LBJ as evidence of the government wanting anything associated with non-white minorities to succeed is simply stupid. Johnson ranks with the likes of Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson as the most racist presidents in American history. LBJ's own agenda with the "War on Poverty" was to make minorities subjective slaves to the Democratic Party by increasing their reliance upon governmental support. He spent billions knowing that it would worsen the lives of impoverished blacks (primarily), while under the guise of aiding them. The entire program was designed to fail in it's publicly addressed goal, but succeed in LBJ's personal agenda. If you actually research the history of most of these housing projects, you find that somewhere along the line white, "progressive" Democrats forced budget cuts which would have provided the required maintenance and security to keep these places operating in a humane manner. To go along with this, it is often those same white progressives who rezoned the areas around these housing projects specifically to limit economic growth.
All of this to keep black voters in line with the Democratic Party through heightened reliance of welfare programs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The major fallout happened when federal subsidies were reduced or cut because the local and state authorities refused to uphold their end of the deal. The federal government continued to feed billions of dollars into these projects, only to see local and state governments siphon it all away... hundreds of millions of it ending up directly in the pockets of corrupt Democrats, or worse, into the hands of mobsters with maintenance contracts through their construction companies which were rarely lived up to in any form whatsoever.
Keldon McFarland billions of other people's money.
High rise public housing still is around in New York
princexmilano you're right. I live in one
Several project buildings in Brownsville (Brooklyn) were torn down and replaced with townhouses.
These ugly high rise houses literally are the same as what China built through 1950~2000,
not as public housing, but as mid-end private residencies.
Most of them survive today, and quite a sight to behold.
Do a video on China please~
But with the high population of china, there would be almost no over options. City would exceed a diameter of 20-30km if the don't grow in height. So travel distances would become longer and longer.
This is a great video!
I've always liked the idea of a super-efficient megaplex that mimics the luxuries you might find on a cruise ship, but it would take a lot of QUALIFIED PEOPLE, such as hospital staff, police, garbage, utilities, engineers, etc. to maintain, plus an ultra-robust monorail system that can transport people, garbage, goods, etc. It'd also need a large solar farm with batteries, as well as parking for all those people, which means it wouldn't be as land or money-efficient as you'd initially think.
Advantages: Less travel distance to work if you're a specialist, monorail can do the work of hundreds of trucks and hundreds of cars, cars see less use, meaning they break less and chew up less gas, utilities are ultra-efficient, no lost water pressure or electricity due to distance traveled, emergency response times would be SECOND TO NONE, distance to education = phenomenal, parks, etc., all walking distance.
Projects don't have ANY OF THESE specialists or facilities.
Imagine a game of Sim City where all you did was zone residential and give it power and water.
No wonder projects became slums. It's inevitable.
Tell the truth.. They wanted the best way to keep “minorities” condensed in one area and from reaching/spreading into the suburbs… So it’s better UP than OUT…. Same pattern in most big inner city low income developments..
Made by the same "people" who have the money 💰. It's so clear their design to oppress but everyone wants to be blind to their racism because it was planned that way
Its better than saturating the suburbs with low lives. It only takes a couple houses out of dozens to ruin a neighborhood. It also lets them concentrate services needed by people in those communities in one place. It would be nice if they could build something with jobs or public transportation to work nearby as well.
Thank god
@@_baller Racism is not a cute look sis 💅. Very last century, get with the times.
@@bananahat3350 tell minorities to stop being pieces of sh it
Well, to be fair. Le Corbusier was a little out of place with his plan of Paris. Basically he wanted to demolish all the city center...
I always wondered why the projects very rarely have fire escapes? Its almost as if they want them to be unable to get out in emergency situations... smh
Modern tower blocks tend to have two internal staircases precisely for that reason. You don't necessarily have to hang the fire escape on the outside of the building. It's unlikely to be a fire in both staircases at once, and if that is the case, well, external fire escapes probably wouldn't be of much use anyway.
@@Codraroll ty, good to know...
I love your videos, so much to learn and interesting :)
I love your videos, so much to learn and interesting :)
imperatur I love both of you
This has nothing to do with CS but it helps you build a better city.
imperatur this video doesn't teach you the truth, it just assumes away problems to racism. The real reason none of these projects work is because people don't care about free stuff.
This just shows you no matter how much you give and help out others refuse to help themselves nothing will ever change
No. It shows you that when racists control the government, they remove funding until the program fails and then use that as proof the program never worked. Then people like you who think "certain people" can't be helped because they are all do nothing and lazy and you re-elect those same people to ruin the programs. They're doing it to you too.
I feel this video tries to blame “high rises” as the source of the problem, but the high rises themselves were never the problem, the issue is how they were managed. Low income minority groups were concentrated in these buildings that were poorly taken care off creating a sense of isolation and possibly even rejection from the rest of society. If these buildings and their communities were better integrated and more diverse, ie. with a more balanced mix of black, whites and other populations, from various income levels, it would have been a very different story. This project failed because this is what happens when you try to segregate people. How tall the buildings actually are is quite irrelevant.
wjatevrr
folks who make middle income wages and/or higher, don't want to live with low or no income folks.
while not all poor folks rob and steal some do. course rich folk steal too.
I don't know but if I lived in the same nice apt bldg as someone who doesn't work- unless they are elderly or otherwise unable- I would be feeling like I deserved more.
lack of control of themselves and or their kids turned these high rises into places of fear and drug use. plus lack of upkeep of bldg, pipes, elevators, washers, driers, killing of roaches, bed bugs and the like led to failure. some city's have high rises and the top floor is the " penthouse". so it can work.
Tammy Ryder there are mixed income buildings in New York and they work very well where do you live Tammy?
Sanaa Jade
Colorado
wjatevrr wewokenow
💯💯
New Orleans just finished knocking down the last of the low rises and replaced them with really nice looking townhouses. The old ones looked pretty bad and you tended not to want to walk back there. The new ones appear to be inviting. Hope they stay that way.
So calliope and magnolia are gone?
How about a video about the (possibly European style?) low-rise apartment blocks with stores on the first floor that seem to be appearing in American cities en masse nowadays?
Thanks for making this. I was volunteering in South Chicago in 2001 and I saw Cabrini Green up close. I thought the giant high rises for low income housing were eye sores. I am glad that they have newer housing now for low income residents.
Cabrini Green is in North Chicago not South and what do you mean eye sores
@@trublu4147 it was NORTHSIDE?!
@@roderickstockdale1678 Yeah Cabrini Green was on the Northside of Chicago.
@@trublu4147 he meant they were too hard to look at
@@roderickstockdale1678 oh alright I get it now and yeah Cabrini was put in a more wealthy part of the city it’s crazy how outside Cabrini Green it was all really nice but inside it was nothing but poverty and gangs.
cool history, but i fail to see how the high rise is responsible for the crime and deplorable conditions of the PJs.
i stayed down the street from a 2 story low rise PJs in my early 20s and they were just as gang infested and violent. i have been to East St. Louis in some low rise PJs and there were murders there almost daily.
im curious as to the explanation that the height of the building somehow affects the behavior of the occupants.
in many cities around the world people live in high rises but they dont turn to sellin dope and bangin. in New York, San Fran, Austin etc people pay top dollar to live in a high rise building.
if anyone has any input on that feel free to HMU.
Exactly. The author of the video is blaming "high rises" instead of the criminals in the high rises.
i think it depends on how they are maintained. Im from NY and i have friends who live in sevral housing projects in Manhattan and the Bronx some are infested with roaches gangs and are poorly maintained some are clean and spotless and policed better. I think it Depends on the area and how much effort a city puts in them.
People, like all other animals, behaviors are heavily dependent upon their social conditions. The moving of jobs to the suburbs along with the lack of funding for education and laws preventing home ownership created the conditions where crime festered. One of the most devastating regulations the housing authority imposed on tenants was the requirement that no family with an "able bodied male over 18" could live there. Many Black men left their families in order for them to have shelter, which resulted in a large % of fatherless homes. As young boys now had no male guidance along with a broken education and economic system, the result is an increase in crime.
Very nice footage!
Now this is a big factor in systematic racism and how minorities like African Americans are STILL affected to this day by racism from the past.
Well the USA is stupid for not giving proper education to minorities and then minorities do stupid shit. I'm not American btw, I'm from South-Eastern Europe (aka the Wild West of Europe).
Two words - Athens Charter. Personaly I think it works, I mean High-rise buildings. Just look how it works in europe (specialy in central europe) and in, but in order to work, those condos must be literally as Athens charter says - with big open green spaces, where people can socialize, with addition of some small busineses here and there. I live in one of the huge hausing projects from '70 that were built in Poland, and by the huge I mean public housing for 30 000 residens, and it's allmoust self-sufficient, with parks, small shops and restaurants and good public transportation system that allows you to communicate with the rest of the city. Really high-rise buildings are not bad if they are made properly from the start :)
Anyway, great vid.
Clistes Poles and Chechs did a great job in renovating (some)soviet microdistricts.
It just proves that, if post communist countries can do it, then any one should ;)
Public high rise building are ugly and depressing especially in eastern and central Europe, Pubic housing is great but in the standards of western Europe and US not Eastern Europe. Like brownstones in the US.
For Eastern and Central Europe it is just a question of modernization and good maintenance. See what Czechs and Germans with soviet houses. They are not a state of art (and they should not be. It is mass and cheap house solution) but they are decent enough varlamov.ru/ 1887136.html varlamov.ru/ 1592678.html . Not a ghetto like in the video
hmmm, i have some theory about it. Both in Europe and US those "projects" are rather smale scale developments - like 10 Blocks grouped together with out any "human" infrastructure aroud it, no parks, no shops etc. In the east it was more of a city within a city. It was planned in opposition to dens 19th and 18th century city centers. Ofcourse it's not that, those blocks are perfect - because thay are not. In the begining of '90s no one wanted to live there, but due to trasmormation, lack of new buildings and other alternatives people were "forced" to live in those blocks. Previously government run housing associations into privat or semi-private ones, that gather for revitalization and now you can admire the resolt. It took more 20 years but in my opinion it was worth it. And think here is the solution - you need time, patience and will of people.
Great insights, very informative video. Thank you!
Thanks for posting🏢🏢🏢Many folks didn't know the history of the projects!!!
Am I the only one that’s gets chills when I think about Cabrini greens
+classy tingzz Whenever I think of Cabrini Greens, I think of "Good Times."
That show was great.
Ur not the only one I get chills too
Candy man 🤡
Instead of public housing apartments for rent, we should build subsidized condos for purchase.
Id rather live in public housing than homeless.
Poo SeeEater me too but low income projects do not create revenue and are set up to fail the working poor . I find that people (who need it) benefit from living in an apartment with the help of section 8 less crime , drugs and gangs
I'd rather camp out in a van like Rob Greenfield.
Here in Seattle there are so many upper class houses and almost no public housing that the majority of the homeless people in our city have a job.
Chewy id rather a mansion in Beverly Hills Ca. Fuck it! Since were dreaming why not aim high💯😀💥
Peyton Bell Because theres an overwhelming chance you will never be rich living in the USA. Self made rich people are extremely rare. Majority of people who claim to be self made were given huge loans from rich family members. So unless you make fire art or have family that are millionaires, you wont get that house.
I grew up in a high-rise or as we call it in Sweden "miljonprogramsområde" that was planned in a such way that the streets between the apartments were car-free filled with only pedestrian routes. The apartments were built on an evelated ground so the underground section of the apartment was really a huge garage to fit in all 7k residents' cars and motor vehicles. Eventhough I'm not a fan at all of high-rise housing projects I must acknowledge the fact that the area where I grew up was planned in a great way to allow people to meet and greet and socialize everyday. Between each row of apartment blocks, parks and recreation areas were available. You could cycle through the entire apartment complex area without having to cross a single automotive road and just to the outskirts of the complex were forests and a local shore with a marina.
The area is called Fisksätra, it lies on the outskirt of Stockholm and was built in the 70's as a part of the Swedish government's million programme intitiative with the intended purpose to build 1 million residential apartments within 10 years.
This area does not ofc have a great reputation after all since it's a social housing area, but now after watching this video i realized how well-planned it was in terms of accessibility and maintenance.
Ah you forgot how government initially got those white families into the suburbs not their money or a want to leave the city and what really kept other races out of the suburbs. If this video is ever revamped or updated a good resource is "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein. Other wise it was informative.
Yes, I definitely want to revisit this topic from the angle of redlining and other racist housing policies. Had to save something for another video. :)
you'd rather be ignorant of history if it'll suit your narrow pov narrative?
It’s so amazing to me that people will talk bad about a community but not acknowledge what makes it that way. Since the beginning people living in the projects were discriminated against. There was no proper maintenance on these buildings, people were living in poverty and conditionings people wouldn’t want their animals living in. There were lack of resources for these people. Then the crack pandemic with continued racial injustices. Don’t ignore the real issues that create the real problems people! It’s not right
Thanks for shining a light on a system, that is ridged to put minorities in unfair disadvantage... that have long lasting effect, for generations to come.....
It wasn't supposed to be "rigged". It was just typical progressive social engineering.
@@genli5603 Gen Li, I would expect you, to feel like that. Especially how your people act towards my people. I'm guessing you're Chinese. are you aware that in china, blacks are be discriminated against, being kicked out of housing, being banned from stores, China investing in Africa and taking advantage of its weak economy. From all the looting from Europeans and now china... wake up or stop acting ignorant to what's going on.....
The system doesn’t have to be “rigged” to put minorities at a disadvantage.
There is no system
@@susanq6030 Only white people in denial, say stuff like that, Susan..... I mean Karen
Fantastic video. They are all simple to understand, plus educational, and I'm very interested in learning about all these topics that you talk about. Great job
Tons of public high rise buildings in Singapore and they do fine. It's not the buildings, it's the people. If Robert Taylor Homes where full of Singaporeans it would have been seen as a success.
very stupid opinion, you should feel bad for having a low functioning brain.
100 % of public housing in USSR were high rise. It was rough in some places but overall commiblocks were enormous improvement and overall success.
Just saw this video and I would love to see a version of this based on New York/Brooklyn/Queens models. They are one of the few places where projects are still unchanged
Pruitt-Igoe was an amazing documentary!!
Agreed
Everything and everyone is to blame, except for the residents themselves.
In general don't we want to increase urban density, decrease urban sprawl, and make more compact walkable mixed use cities?
marcus7564 I think the modern american suburbs look really boring to live in. At least here in Europe you have pubs/bar/coffeshops where you can get drunk and return safely to your house that's located across the street
Isn't it ironic that in some large cities- whites are moving back into the urban areas? What -the suburbs w/their "cookie cutter" houses are not good enough anymore? Hi-rises are Concrete Jungles.......
University of Oregon has always (since its founding in 1914) had its School of Architecture and Allied Arts (now the College of Design) "under one roof".
I'm so glad they didn't build that in Paris.
David Harrison : Hear hear!
Harrison, do an image search for "banlieue"... You will see depressing brutalistic high-rise after brutalistic high-rise.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue
David Harrison France has many minority, low income housing projects, no difference then the usa.
David Harrison not yet ?
Obviously, you've been living under a rock! This is usually the case with some humans - oh that affects those ppl over there, not my problem. Or, out of sight, out of mind!
Dont blame the projects. Its a people issue. Commies built same ones here in Eastern Europe and they are nice, clean, apartment owners invested in recostrutions of whole building blocks, individuals invested in replacement of old widows to new double paned glass etc.. noone is destroying their properties and they appreciate in value..
xkeepersvk did prejudice play into it as well? Were the people given an opportunity or were they denied like the blacks were
@@saidufofanah2210 u explain da crime in black projects? go ahead, self victimiser and racist...
xkeepersvk - Did you not hear in the video, that Real Estate companies did not do business with Blacks? Blacks were barred from investing as well.
@@pinktoes3875 Crime had nothing to do with blacks being denied bank loans,investment opportunities and the ability to move to better neighborhoods, but keep ignoring the truth, reaching and making up excuses 😂🤦♀️
@@AVG336 lol, u too. keep ignoring and twisting the truth like u already do.