Michael Kimmelman, after visiting the Penn South housing cooperative in Manhattan and reflecting on the new film "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth", questions the role that design has in determining success or failure for tower in the park housing type.
A companion piece in some ways to the story we linked to earlier this week, Kimmelman considers the much maligned housing type that held such promise for providing a high quality-of-life for its residents when built en-masse in the 1950s and 1960s. Not all developments designed following the same Corbusian philosophy as Pruitt-Igoe shared its, now symbolic, fate. And Penn South is just one of Pruitt-Igoe's architectural cousins that thrived.
"Alienating, penitential breeding grounds for vandalism and violence: that became the tower in the park's epitaph. But Penn South, with its stolid redbrick, concrete-slab housing stock, is clearly a safe, successful place. In this case the architecture works. In St. Louis, where the architectural scheme was the same, what killed Pruitt-Igoe was not its bricks and mortar."
FULL STORY: Towers of Dreams: One Ended in Nightmare

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

Chicago’s Ghost Rails
Just beneath the surface of the modern city lie the remnants of its expansive early 20th-century streetcar system.

Amtrak Cutting Jobs, Funding to High-Speed Rail
The agency plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce and has confirmed it will not fund new high-speed rail projects.

Ohio Forces Data Centers to Prepay for Power
Utilities are calling on states to hold data center operators responsible for new energy demands to prevent leaving consumers on the hook for their bills.

MARTA CEO Steps Down Amid Citizenship Concerns
MARTA’s board announced Thursday that its chief, who is from Canada, is resigning due to questions about his immigration status.

Silicon Valley ‘Bike Superhighway’ Awarded $14M State Grant
A Caltrans grant brings the 10-mile Central Bikeway project connecting Santa Clara and East San Jose closer to fruition.
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