Category: Public housing

Distrust me just this once? Part 3, how to build trust

10 September, 2009 (10:15) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]
  
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
– Oscar Wilde
 
In the first two parts of this post, we encountered (via a Los Angeles Times article) Los Angeles‘ Jordan Downs public housing property, and the ambitious (if sketchy and idealistic) plans for its [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 2, the enemies of trust

9 September, 2009 (10:43) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].
 
 
“Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?”
– Groucho Marx, Duck Soup
 
To redevelop Jordan Downs, one of Los Angeles’s largest and worst public housing properties, requires gargantuan capital – the figure $1,000,000,000 has been bandied about – and that, in turn, requires massive political capital, [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 1, the need for trust

8 September, 2009 (09:50) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

“Trust me just this once.”
– from Great Lies in Real Estate, Volume 3
 

“Trust me, I’m on your side”
 
Slums persist in part because they have defenders.  Among those defenders are many slum residents themselves, for whom a lifetime’s experience has taught them, Trust no one, especially any well-dressed or well-spoken newcomer who claims, “I’m from the [...]

Big bad blocks: Part 2, blame the governments

3 August, 2009 (10:45) | Architecture, Athens Charter, Configuration, High-rise, Humor, Le Corbusier, Public housing, Speculation | No comments

[Continued from last Thursday’s Part 1 .]
 
In Part 1 of our tour of 15 housing projects from hell, via the passionate posters at the funky Web site Oobject, we indicted the architects, led by Le Corbusier, for throwing up concrete stack after stack of monoliths. 
 

Can you too be an urban planner?
Just try these plans and specs
 
Yet [...]

Big bad blocks: Part 1, blame the architects

30 July, 2009 (10:45) | Architecture, Athens Charter, Configuration, High-rise, Humor, Le Corbusier, Public housing, Speculation | No comments

If architecture cannot make us into better human beings and societies, can it make us into worse ones?  Can large monolithic high-rise blocks dehumanize us?  As presented on the funky Web site Oobject, herewith are 15 housing projects from hell, through which – aside from being appalled that architects, builders and government inflicted these upon [...]