Main entry:

Vale, Lawrence J., 1959-

Title & Author:

Reclaiming public housing : a half century of struggle in three public neighborhoods / Lawrence J. Vale.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2002.

Description:

xiii, 482 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
"This book is intended as a companion volume to From the Puritans to the projects : public housing and public neighbors"--Preface.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 421-468) and index.
1. Introduction: reclaiming public housing -- Public housing: critics and apologies -- Public neighborhoods -- Public housing as constructed communities -- The stigma of the projects -- Public housing transformations: public and private -- Public housing in Boston -- Pressures on public housing -- Three Boston public neighborhoods -- 2. West Broadway: public housing for "lower-end" whites -- South Boston's lower end before public housing -- Public housing and South Boston's lower end, 1935-1965 -- The D Street wars -- Assaults on the project -- Assaults by the press -- The residents fight back -- The fight for redevelopment -- Success and distress -- 3. Franklin Field: public housing, neighborhood abandonment, and racial transition -- Franklin Field's origins: the geography of marginality -- Housing Veterans on Franklin Field -- The long decline -- Lurching toward redevelopment -- The limits of redeveloped housing -- Accounting for failure -- 4. Commonwealth: public housing and private opportunities -- Boston's "wild west": Brighton before public housing -- Public housing on Brighton's last farm -- Fidelis way, scourge of the neighborhood -- Redevelopment partnership: a three-way street -- Assessing "success" -- 5. Reclaiming housing, recovering communities: a comparison of neighborhood struggles -- Trajectories of collapse -- Trajectories of redevelopment -- Seven kinds of success -- Expanding and applying the measures of success -- Recovering communities -- Signs of life?
Also issued online.

Summary:

"In Reclaiming Public Housing, Lawrence Vale explores the rise, fall, and redevelopment of three public housing projects in Boston. Vale looks at these projects from the perspectives of their low-income residents and assesses the contributions of the design professionals who helped to transform these once devastated places during the 1980s and 1990s."
"The three similarly designed projects were built at the same time under the same government program and experienced similar declines. Each received comparable funding for redevelopment, and each design team consisted of first-rate professionals who responded with similar "defensible space" redesign plans. Why, then, was one redevelopment effort a nationally touted success story, another only a mixed success, and the third a widely acknowledged failure? The book answers this key question by situating each effort in the context of specific neighborhood struggles. In each case, battles over race and poverty played out somewhat differently, yielding wildly different results."--Cover.

ISBN:

0674008987 (alk. paper)
9780674008984 (alk. paper)

Subject:

Public housing Massachusetts Boston History.
Low-income housing Massachusetts Boston History.
Housing policy Massachusetts Boston History.
Poor Massachusetts Boston History.
Urban renewal Massachusetts Boston History.
Neighborhoods Massachusetts Boston History.
Logement social Massachusetts Boston Histoire.
Pauvres Logement Massachusetts Boston Histoire.
Logement Politique gouvernementale Massachusetts Boston Histoire.
Pauvres Massachusetts Boston Histoire.
Rénovation urbaine Massachusetts Boston Histoire.
Housing policy
Low-income housing
Neighborhoods
Poor
Public housing
Urban renewal
Sozialer Wohnungsbau
Stadt
Erneuerung
Kommunale Wohnungspolitik
Sozialwohnung
Massachusetts Boston
Boston, Mass.

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 227461
Call No.: HD7288.78.U52 M48 2002
Status: Available