High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post?World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Project is the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex.
Venkatesh draws on his relationships with tenants, gang members, police officers, and local organizations to offer an intimate portrait of an inner-city community that journalists and the public have only viewed from a distance. Challenging the conventional notion of public housing as a failure, this startling book re-creates tenants' thirty-year effort to build a safe and secure neighborhood: their political battles for services from an indifferent city bureaucracy, their daily confrontation with entrenched poverty, their painful decisions about whether to work with or against the street gangs whose drug dealing both sustained and imperiled their lives.
American Project explores the fundamental question of what makes a community viable. In his chronicle of tenants' political and personal struggles to create a decent place to live, Venkatesh brings us to the heart of the matter.
High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post?World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Project is the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex.
Venkatesh draws on his relationships with tenants, gang members, police officers, and local organizations to offer an intimate portrait of an inner-city community that journalists and the public have only viewed from a distance. Challenging the conventional notion of public housing as a failure, this startling book re-creates tenants' thirty-year effort to build a safe and secure neighborhood: their political battles for services from an indifferent city bureaucracy, their daily confrontation with entrenched poverty, their painful decisions about whether to work with or against the street gangs whose drug dealing both sustained and imperiled their lives.
American Project explores the fundamental question of what makes a community viable. In his chronicle of tenants' political and personal struggles to create a decent place to live, Venkatesh brings us to the heart of the matter.
Foreword Preface Introduction 1. A Place to Call Home 2. Doing the Hustle 3. "What's It Like to Be in Hell?" 4. Tenants Face Off with the Gang 5. Street-Gang Diplomacy 6. The Beginning of the End of a Modern Ghetto Author's Note Notes Acknowledgments Index
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
Venkatesh spent hundreds of hours interviewing residents of
Chicago's Robert Taylor Holmes housing project. Poorly designed,
cheaply built, and isolated from surrounding neighborhoods by an
expressway, the Holmes project was doomed almost from the
start...Venkatesh describes the struggles of tenant leaders and
social activists who resisted the gangs and sought to improve
living conditions, but he can't point to any wholesale reform in
what was a fatally flawed system from the get-go.
*Kirkus Reviews*
A fascinating and rigorous explanation of a how a model of urban
subsidized housing, which succeeded for 20 years, declined into
disastrous conditions for its inhabitants...[American Project] is
an important contribution to understanding urban poverty and will
stand with classic work by Carol Stack and William Julius Wilson
(who wrote the foreword). Highly recommended.
*Library Journal*
This book gets beyond academic analysis and gives voice to
residents' concerns over education and health care, as well as the
lack of employment opportunities, which in turn pushes young people
to the streets in search of a means of earning money. By describing
inhabitants' strident efforts to unify the community and fight
political battles against an often indifferent bureaucracy,
Venkatesh challenges the stereotypical notion that public housing
fails because its residents do.
*Doubletake*
The demolition of high-rise public housing such as the Robert
Taylor Homes can only improve the lives of those presently
subjected to its debilitating and dangerous grasp, right? Wrong.
That, at least, is the carefully thought-out view of Sudhir Alladi
Venkatesh in American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern
Ghetto. Revivifying participant observation as a form of
sociological research, Venkatesh...has produced an ethnography of
the South Side's most infamous project that challenges much of what
passes for conventional wisdom...In many ways, Venkatesh's
study...appears as a brief against a policy of demolition and
dispersal...Forced relocations with minimal assistance would uproot
the social networks painstakingly created over the past generation
and represent a retrogression...The problem, in short, lay not
simply with the occupants of public housing but in their
relationship with the larger society.
*Chicago Tribune*
The general public believes the Robert Taylor Homes are an
unmistakable failure. But author Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh challenges
that view...It's not that most communities are free of the social
ills that infect public housing but 'that we ask more of the poor,
and particularly those in public housing'...[whose] good intentions
[are] thwarted by poor law enforcement, diminished federal funding,
thriving underground economies and increased gang violence.
*Chicago Reporter*
Venkatesh wrote American Project to urge readers to get beyond the
quantitative, statistical measure of the urban pathology of public
housing and look at the 'collective memory' of the people who lived
there. It's all too easy to disparage life in the projects,
Venkatesh notes, but such thinking also disparages the forms of
community, political organization, and ultimately the lives of
those who made Robert Taylor their home...American Project is
moving, thoughtful, and written with common-sense clarity.
*Baltimore City Paper*
The major contribution of this book is its focus. Most of the
recent books on the life of the inner city ghetto focus exclusively
on the individual behavior of poor urban residents, and stress the
pathology of the inner city. American Project, however, documents
continuous efforts of the project residents to create community, to
pool resources and political muscle to insure the continuation of
basic services, and to secure democratic representation. The
ultimate failure of Robert Taylor Homes was not a lack of trying,
but rather that the problems faced by the residents went beyond
what they could address with limited resources.
*Choice*
[This] history of Chicago's notorious Robert Taylor
Homes...[describes] how this once promising program fell so low and
[offers] cautionary lessons for progressives who want to devise
successful social policies...Venkatesh probes beyond the headlines
about Robert Taylor Homes--the shootings, murders, accidental
deaths, and police sweeps--and shows us how its residents used
whatever resources were at hand to adjust to adverse circumstances.
The brilliance of the author's approach is that he listens
sympathetically to the people who lived and worked in this massive
public housing development, yet he remains scrupulously
objective.
*American Prospect*
The results of Venkatesh's myriad experiences are encomapped in 332
rivetting, thought-provoking pages...Completely different from the
usual sociological tracts, American Project proffers a strong
narrative and vivid stories. It offers its readers challenging
insights into the lives of people in the government-subsidised
[Robert Taylor] Homes. Above all, it stunningly portrays the
transformation of a curious Indian-American "outsider" into an
"insider" who gradually comes to understand and appreciate "the
beauty of human condition" amidst squalor and violence.
*India Today International*
American Project is a revealing look at what works (and what
doesn’t) in public housing—and why. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, one of
the most promising young sociologists today, tells the story of one
of America’s most infamous housing projects, the Robert Taylor
Homes in Chicago… Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork within the
projects themselves, American Project is the first comprehensive
story of what went wrong in one of America’s first and most famous
public housing projects. By engaging himself with the community,
Venkatesh gets beyond a purely academic analysis and is able to
illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of urban public housing both
in the Robert Taylor homes and within the larger realm of urban
studies. He draws on his personal relationships with tenants, and
local police officers and municipal organizations—to tell the real
story of the besieged inner-city community that journalists and
outsiders often never see.
*Black Perspective*
American Project examines the Robert Taylor Homes, a high-rise
public housing complex in Chicago. It records the initial hopes
when the development opened in 1962 and the deterioration that
later occurred...[This book] is a rich and perceptive account of
the inhabitants of the project, which brings us into close contact
with everyone from poor tenants to drug peddling gangs...In this
vivid and compelling portrait of the project, Venkatesh describes
the breakdown of the public housing effort in 20th-century America.
Most important is his observation that service providers and other
officials often operated in a system that limited their ability to
improve conditions.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Venkatesh spent hundreds of hours interviewing residents of
Chicago's Robert Taylor Holmes housing project. Poorly designed,
cheaply built, and isolated from surrounding neighborhoods by an
expressway, the Holmes project was doomed almost from the
start...Venkatesh describes the struggles of tenant leaders and
social activists who resisted the gangs and sought to improve
living conditions, but he can't point to any wholesale reform in
what was a fatally flawed system from the get-go. * Kirkus Reviews
*
A fascinating and rigorous explanation of a how a model of urban
subsidized housing, which succeeded for 20 years, declined into
disastrous conditions for its inhabitants...[American
Project] is an important contribution to understanding urban
poverty and will stand with classic work by Carol Stack and William
Julius Wilson (who wrote the foreword). Highly recommended. --
Paula R. Dempsey * Library Journal *
This book gets beyond academic analysis and gives voice to
residents' concerns over education and health care, as well as the
lack of employment opportunities, which in turn pushes young people
to the streets in search of a means of earning money. By describing
inhabitants' strident efforts to unify the community and fight
political battles against an often indifferent bureaucracy,
Venkatesh challenges the stereotypical notion that public housing
fails because its residents do. * Doubletake *
The demolition of high-rise public housing such as the Robert
Taylor Homes can only improve the lives of those presently
subjected to its debilitating and dangerous grasp, right? Wrong.
That, at least, is the carefully thought-out view of Sudhir Alladi
Venkatesh in American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern
Ghetto. Revivifying participant observation as a form of
sociological research, Venkatesh...has produced an ethnography of
the South Side's most infamous project that challenges much of what
passes for conventional wisdom...In many ways, Venkatesh's
study...appears as a brief against a policy of demolition and
dispersal...Forced relocations with minimal assistance would uproot
the social networks painstakingly created over the past generation
and represent a retrogression...The problem, in short, lay not
simply with the occupants of public housing but in their
relationship with the larger society. -- Arnold Hirsch * Chicago
Tribune *
The general public believes the Robert Taylor Homes are an
unmistakable failure. But author Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh challenges
that view...It's not that most communities are free of the social
ills that infect public housing but 'that we ask more of the poor,
and particularly those in public housing'...[whose] good intentions
[are] thwarted by poor law enforcement, diminished federal funding,
thriving underground economies and increased gang violence. *
Chicago Reporter *
Venkatesh wrote American Project to urge readers to get
beyond the quantitative, statistical measure of the urban pathology
of public housing and look at the 'collective memory' of the people
who lived there. It's all too easy to disparage life in the
projects, Venkatesh notes, but such thinking also disparages the
forms of community, political organization, and ultimately the
lives of those who made Robert Taylor their home...American
Project is moving, thoughtful, and written with common-sense
clarity. -- Michael Corbin * Baltimore City Paper *
The major contribution of this book is its focus. Most of the
recent books on the life of the inner city ghetto focus exclusively
on the individual behavior of poor urban residents, and stress the
pathology of the inner city. American Project, however,
documents continuous efforts of the project residents to create
community, to pool resources and political muscle to insure the
continuation of basic services, and to secure democratic
representation. The ultimate failure of Robert Taylor Homes was not
a lack of trying, but rather that the problems faced by the
residents went beyond what they could address with limited
resources. -- G. Rabrenovic * Choice *
[This] history of Chicago's notorious Robert Taylor
Homes...[describes] how this once promising program fell so low and
[offers] cautionary lessons for progressives who want to devise
successful social policies...Venkatesh probes beyond the headlines
about Robert Taylor Homes--the shootings, murders, accidental
deaths, and police sweeps--and shows us how its residents used
whatever resources were at hand to adjust to adverse circumstances.
The brilliance of the author's approach is that he listens
sympathetically to the people who lived and worked in this massive
public housing development, yet he remains scrupulously objective.
-- Alexander von Hoffman * American Prospect *
The results of Venkatesh's myriad experiences are encomapped in 332
rivetting, thought-provoking pages...Completely different from the
usual sociological tracts, American Project proffers a
strong narrative and vivid stories. It offers its readers
challenging insights into the lives of people in the
government-subsidised [Robert Taylor] Homes. Above all, it
stunningly portrays the transformation of a curious Indian-American
"outsider" into an "insider" who gradually comes to understand and
appreciate "the beauty of human condition" amidst squalor and
violence. -- Arthur J. Pals * India Today International *
American Project is a revealing look at what works (and what
doesn't) in public housing-and why. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, one of
the most promising young sociologists today, tells the story of one
of America's most infamous housing projects, the Robert Taylor
Homes in Chicago... Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork within
the projects themselves, American Project is the first
comprehensive story of what went wrong in one of America's first
and most famous public housing projects. By engaging himself with
the community, Venkatesh gets beyond a purely academic analysis and
is able to illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of urban public
housing both in the Robert Taylor homes and within the larger realm
of urban studies. He draws on his personal relationships with
tenants, and local police officers and municipal organizations-to
tell the real story of the besieged inner-city community that
journalists and outsiders often never see. * Black Perspective
*
American Project examines the Robert Taylor Homes, a
high-rise public housing complex in Chicago. It records the initial
hopes when the development opened in 1962 and the deterioration
that later occurred...[This book] is a rich and perceptive account
of the inhabitants of the project, which brings us into close
contact with everyone from poor tenants to drug peddling gangs...In
this vivid and compelling portrait of the project, Venkatesh
describes the breakdown of the public housing effort in
20th-century America. Most important is his observation that
service providers and other officials often operated in a system
that limited their ability to improve conditions. -- Allan Winkler
* Times Higher Education Supplement *
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