The 1972 demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, which observers such as Tom Wolfe celebrated as a bullet to the head of urban renewal, was in reality just the beginning of a painful and protracted end. Chicago's Cabrini-Green, arguably the best known of the housing projects and the setting for the CBS sitcom Good Times, didn't start coming down until 1995; the last tower block was razed in 2011. Earlier this year, the Chicago Housing Authority finally unveiled a draft plan for redevelopment of the 65-acre site. (As for Pruitt-Igoe, today most of its 57 acres are overgrown forest, untended and awaiting redemption.) It takes time to dismantle an institution. As enthusiasm and funding for the welfare state have waned in the United States, so too, it seems, has the incidence of grand public gestures in infrastructure, architecture, and planning. Certainly, the Cabrini-Green replacement scheme is nothing spectacular. It requires design bravado in small doses at most. And that may be almost alright, to borrow a phrase from Robert Venturi, faia.
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