Promises Made, Promises Kept?

27 October 2000 - 8:00am

Threats loom to the Community Reinvestment Act.

Just a few years ago, the Park Lee public housing complex in eastern Chesterfield County, just outside Richmond, Virginia, was "so nightmarish, you didn't want to drive by, let alone live there," says longtime Richmond resident Thomasina Jones.The dilapidated rows of four-story housing had been abandoned, first by a third of its 1,000 residents, then by the project's owner. HUD put the development into foreclosure in 1996.Today, the same 80-acre parcel is called Winchester Greens and it looks like a little town, Jones reports, with 240 brick townhouses and cobblestone sidewalks.

Source: Planning Magazine, October 15, 2000
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Its very unsuitability for an urban center justifies its current usage as a suburban or ex-urban pattern.