Where are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities: Transforming Public Housing Communities

Scholars and interested parties critical of the presumptions and practicies of HUD's infamous HOPE VI program have often had a byzantine research path to follow. Part of the blame falls on the lack of institutional memory at HUD (referenced in the Zhang and Weismann paper in chapter 2 of this book), but serious critical insight into this program has been a long time in coming. Given the considerable impacts this program has had and continues to have on urban ethnic and racial minorities, that is a major public administration shortcoming. Using the ongoing Chicago "Plan for Transformation" experience as a springboard, this volume furnishes the best one volume treatment of ongoing American public housing "transformations" currently available. This book is highly informative; in addition to containing chapters on the historical context of 1990's "transformation," the book also furnishes analysis of what the demolition of public housing actually looked like on the ground, who stood (and stands) to benefit from the gentrification engendered by the demolition of high profile public housing, and also contains some excellent critical analysis of the "new urbanist" premises that were built into the HOPE VI program in the early to mid 1990's. This book is a much-needed critical antidote to the architectural determinism of much of the "smart growth" and "new urbanist" dogma still seeping out of this country's leading urban and regional planning schools. One noteworthy example: New Orleans, post hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Armed with the information this book contains, advocates and activists nationwide should be able to stand on more equal footing with the well compensated "consultants," professors, and graduate students that were responsible for the demolition of many historic public housing communities around the United States. Note: This review refers to the paperback edition of this book, which is considerably more affordable than the hardcover version. The binding of the paperback edition is pretty flimsy (pages are already falling out of my almost new copy), but the lower price makes that acceptable.