A new documentary promises to reveal the stories of the people who lived in the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. The filmmakers promise to "implode myths" about this symbol of failed urban renewal policy.
The filmmakers argue that the mythologizing of Pruitt-Igoe has led to a general belief that public housing is bad, and left an impression that the problem was partly in concentrating poverty:
"A more thorough examination of Pruitt-Igoe should take into account the ways in which public housing was used as a tool of racial segregation and as a justification for the clearance of poor and working-class neighborhoods. It should look at the dominant culture of the time, which stressed uniformity and "hygiene" in the domestic sphere, political life, and neighborhood composition. It should question the priorities of the legislation that created large-scale public housing but failed to adequately fund it."
The documentary trailer can be seen below:
Trailer – The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.
FULL STORY: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History
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Mayors' Institute on City Design
City of Sunnyvale
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP)
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