High-rise Public Housing Research Articles

Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. By Didier Fassin. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. 320 pp. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. By Didier Fassin. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. 320 pp. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.This fascinating book examines the punitive French police practices that triggered widespread rioting in French cities in 2005. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the time of those rebellions, the analysis reveals how police officers justified their practices and why the people subjected these practices so deeply resented them. The analysis has wide relevance beyond the French context.The author focuses on particular situations, a concept similar in some ways the police-civilian encounter that is the subject of many U.S. studies, but with special attention participants' understanding of is it that's going on here? (p. 148, quoting Goffman). What is going on is intense, ongoing stopping, identity checking, and frisking. Fassin shows that the meaning of these practices amounts deliberate humiliation of young racial minority men that is justified by an understanding of these targets as a foreign and dangerous element. This ongoing humiliation serves enforce these youths' subordination in a hierarchical social order.The police studied by Fassin are mainly young working class white men from small towns assigned the poor racial minority banlieues (suburbs). From politicians' rhetoric and police training they learn that they must use extraordinary measures bring order an alien jungle rife with violent crime. Their official insignias express this targeting: one is a rifle-scope cross-hairs centered on a high-rise public housing project. Ironically, rates of violent crime are down in France as in other industrialized countries, and so the French anticrime squads patrol in boredom, waiting long hours for the rare emergency call. Lacking the need respond crime, they make proactive stops ostensibly aimed at preventing it. They target young men, singly or in groups, demand identity papers and make frisks. Needing make arrests show that they are doing their job, they arrest for trivial offenses. Often these arrests seem remarkably perverse: the adolescent boy sitting with friends on his apartment's stoop, arrested for failing bring his identity papers that he says he can retrieve from his apartment if only allowed do this, or the young man arrested for responding a provocation deliberately aimed at achieving this result.Although the police occasionally beat people, Fassin observes that the meaning of violence extends deeper and beyond the physical act. It takes the form of what he calls moral violence, or the deliberate, almost sadistic humiliation, both of those physically beaten and those who, while not touched, are cruelly degraded. In nearly every stop the police cast insults, often pushing the point painfully and deeply, to institute a relationship of abasement and mortification (p. …

Blowing it up and knocking it down: The local and city-wide effects of demolishing high concentration public housing on crime

This paper estimates the effect that the closure and demolition of roughly 20,000 units of geographically concentrated high-rise public housing had on crime in Chicago. We estimate local effects of closures on crime in the neighborhoods where high-rises stood and in proximate neighborhoods. We also estimate the impact that households displaced from high-rises had on crime in the neighborhoods to which they moved and neighborhoods close to those. Overall, reductions in violent crime in and near the areas where high-rises were demolished greatly outweighed increases in violent crime associated with the arrival of displaced residents in new neighborhoods.

Residents’ and experts’ perspectives for evaluation of importance of Health Performance Indicators in social housings

This study evaluates the health performance of high-density, high-rise public housing in Korea to seek ways to improve their performance for the health and wellbeing of occupants. To do this, the existing ‘Health Performance Indicator for the Public Housing’ developed by a previous study in 2010 was utilized to compare and analyse the characteristic differences as evaluated by experts and the residents. The survey tool was developed to allow evaluation by the experts using pairwise comparison between components; while the residents were asked to evaluate the relative importance of the components in the survey tool. Furthermore, Analytic Hierarchy Process was applied to the evaluation given by experts and PASW statistical package was used to analyse the survey results given by the residents. The results showed that the residents do have a high awareness of the impacts of the various components in their apartments that could be seen visually, revealing a partial difference in their awareness in comparison to that given by the experts. It is therefore necessary to utilize this understanding of the experts and residents in order to meet the actual demands of the residents in accordance with their awareness. It is expected that the evaluation results of this study would be used in the construction plan of new apartments to promote healthy housing and to incorporate not just the experts’ view but also the demand of the residents.

Public Housing and Life Chances: Insights from a Longitudinal Study

The lack of affordable housing for low-income families with children in Australia is an issue of considerable concern in a context where access to public housing has become quite restricted and where home ownership remains the dream. The longitudinal Life Chances Study provides data to explore housing histories of 137 families with young children over an 18-year period, highlighting the lower home ownership of low-income families over time. The article then considers the housing history of 20 of the families who lived in the same high-rise public housing estate at the start of the study. Three case studies illustrate their housing pathways. While families had both positive and negative experiences in public housing, public housing provided an affordable and secure base while they established themselves in employment and saved to purchase homes. The article confirms the importance of access to public housing for low-income families.

Learning From New York

Problem, research strategy, and findings: High-rise public housing has been entirely discredited in the United States as a legitimate affordable housing planning strategy because of notorious failures in large cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. Missing from the planning literature is the long-term achievement record of America's largest operator of high-rise public housing, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which still operates 2,600 buildings primarily in modernist tower-in-the-park superblocks for 403,995 authorized tenants. This article assembles and analyzes historical and contemporary materials to create a portrait of functioning American tower-block public housing. The article discusses both contextual factors (New York's transit network, density, and diversity) and successful long-term management in three areas (daily operations, tenant selection, and lobbying) as key to the NYCHA's preservation of public housing. Takeaway for practice: In operations, NYCHA has maintained large front-line staffing on project grounds that play a critical role both in maintenance and social order. In tenant selection, administrators for decades have maintained greater social mixture and better finances by recruiting and retaining working families and, at the same time, enforcing social control through heavy policing. In politics, NYCHA has successfully lobbied for additional federal and city support. Long-term challenges to project preservation and current challenges in New York are also discussed. The findings raise the possibility of high-density urban towers for low-income residents in strong market cities, provided that sufficient attention is paid to design, tenancy, financing, and social control. Research support: None.

The Strange Career of Public Housing

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Efforts to account for the history of public housing in America are fraught with competing narratives. Many scholars, policy analysts, architects, and planners seek explanations for the successes and failures of housing projects from within the program itself. Some argue that projects rise and fall based on the management performance of housing authorities, while others look to racism, concentrated poverty, crime, and other social conditions. For many, the challenges faced by public housing result from the alienating and dehumanizing qualities of modernist architecture. Still, others argue that the Housing Act of 1937 was compromised from the beginning and, thus, produced compromised results. This article acknowledges all of these factors as important yet insufficient to account for overall public housing performance; it reframes the narrative of public housing within broader urban conditions, suggesting that the fate of public housing is intimately tied to the fate of the cities that surround them. Takeaway for practice: Current accounts of the fate of public housing tend to reflect narrow managerial, planning, and architectural concerns. As a result, the literature on public housing insufficiently informs long-term policy decisions and planning practices. Solutions will only emerge when policymakers and planners take into account the impact of capital flight, social disinvestment, and the weak powers of cities to overcome such obstacles. After all, these urban conditions apply as much to recently created HOPE VI neighborhoods as to the high-rise public housing neighborhoods they replaced. Research support: None.

Mixed-income developments and low rates of return: insights from relocated public housing residents in Chicago

In the largest poverty deconcentration effort in any city in the US, all high-rise public housing family developments in Chicago have been demolished and are being replaced by mixed-income developments. Advocates for public housing residents have worked hard to negotiate a “right to return” to the new mixed-income developments. Yet, as in other cities across the country, the rates of return to the new developments have been very low. Little is understood about residents' perceptions of their options or the factors that drive their relocation decisions. This article examines relocation decisions using data from in-depth interviews with a panel of relocating residents and a sample of “returners” at three mixed-income developments in Chicago. Our findings about relocation decisions include the relevance of attachment to people and place, challenges to the notion of resident “choice,” conceptions about the anticipated benefits of mixed-income communities that refute popular theories about the value of higher-income neighbors, and anticipated trade-offs and risks associated with a move to a mixed-income development.

Chicken Coops and Machines of Interminable Errors: A History of the Grands Ensembles in Parisian Suburbs

The grands ensembles, rows of high-rise public housing units constructed in and around major French cities following World War II, were anticipated as the “miracle solution” for a catastrophic housing shortage. Yet they have often been blamed for a range of social ills, and two times since their construction have been the backdrop of violent youth riots. This paper pieces together the history of the grands ensembles through an examination of the emergence of public housing in France, the transformation of the construction industry, and the philosophical and aesthetic influences of the Modernist movement.

Theoretical evaluation of thermal and energy performance of tropical green roofs

The thermal and energy efficiency of tropical green roofs is assessed by a theoretical model to clarify the contribution of underlying factors. The suitability of 1400 high-rise public housing blocks in Hong Kong for rooftop greening was assessed by remote sensing images. Weather and microclimatic-soil monitoring data of an experimental green roof provided the basis for computations. Roof greening prevented a huge amount of solar energy at 43.9 TJ in one summer from penetrating the buildings to bring significant energy saving. Thermal performance of humid-tropical green roofs, with greater latent heat dissipation, is twice more effective than the temperate ones. The energy balance model shows that solar energy absorption by bare and green roofs depends on shortwave rather than longwave radiation. Heat flux into a building indicates a one-day time lag after a sunshine day. With restricted evapotranspiration, bare roofs have more sensible heat and heat storage than green roofs. The bare roof albedo of 0.15, comparing with 0.30 of green roof, renders 75% higher heat storage. Small increase in convection coefficient from 12 to 16 could amplify 24% and 45% of latent heat dissipation respectively for bare and green roofs. Doubling the soil water availability could halve the heat storage of green roofs.

Living with High-Rise Modernity: The Modernist Kiel Housing Estate of Renaat Braem, A Catalyst to a Socialist Modern Way of Life?

ABSTRACTPublic housing of the reconstruction period is generally considered a poor imitation of the modernist housing of the interwar period. The pressing housing shortage and the urge for rapid reconstruction initiated the rationalization of the construction process. Still, postwar housing production has often been blamed for having turned into a purely technocratic and pragmatic undertaking and for having lost the leftist ideals in which the modernism of the Modern Movement was engrained—providing all people with decent housing. Complaints of drabness, disorientation, inhuman vastness, isolation, and monotony have been raised. For many protagonists in the housing debate, high-rise projects have been consistently perceived as being maladjusted for families with children. However, does all postwar housing fit that picture? Was life in a high-rise apartment really that harmful for families with children? What did those kinds of buildings do to their inhabitants? By means of a Belgian case study—the modernist, well-promoted high-rise public housing blocks of the avant-gardist Renaat Braem at the Kiel Estate—the article questions this picture. Going from the macro-scale of Belgian postwar housing policy to the micro-level of the home of two occupants of Braem's apartments, I reveal the interactions and tensions between the opinion of some politicians, design discourses, the architecture of the building, and the living practice of the inhabitants.

Living in a Mixed-Income Development: Resident Perceptions of the Benefits and Disadvantages of Two Developments in Chicago

Policy-makers in several countries are turning to income- and tenure-mixing strategies in an attempt to reverse decades of social and economic isolation in impoverished urban areas. In the US city of Chicago, all high-rise public housing developments across the city are being demolished, public housing residents are being dispersed throughout the metropolitan area and 10 new mixed-income developments are being created on the footprint of former public housing complexes. Findings are presented from in-depth interviews with residents across income levels and tenures at two mixed-income developments and the paper explores residents' perceptions of the physical, psychological and social impacts of the mixed-income setting on their lives.

The Struggle Over Redevelopment At Cabrini-Green, 1989-2004

Over the past three decades, American public housing authorities have advocated the demolition of high-rise public housing projects. Since the late 1980s, governments and local groups have developed plans to tear down the Cabrini-Green public housing project located in the Near North neighborhood in Chicago. The plans call for the demolition of the Cabrini high-rises and replacing them with mixed-income neighborhoods. The new communities are intended to help the public housing residents by reducing their social and economic isolation. Some of the Cabrini residents have fought the redevelopment plans in court because they argue that the new communities are not adequate for the number of displaced residents. Due to court injunctions, the redevelopment has been a slow process: while some of the high-rises have been torn down and several mixed-income developments have been built near Cabrini, a number of high-rises remain. Questions surrounding the resistance at Cabrini-Green and implications for the future of public housing policy are briefly considered

Social capital, health and electronic community in public high-rise estates: An Australian case-study

The four years from 2001 to 2005 saw the roll out of an innovative social enterprise on one of Melbourne’s high rise public housing estates, Atherton Gardens. It provided residents with access to personal computers, computer training, an intranet, internet and email, as well as establishing a training room, open access computer lab, repairs workshop and a help desk service for computer users. This paper reports on a three year research project which was undertaken to assess the impact of this initiative and to analyse its effects, not only on residents’ access to and use of new forms of information and communication technologies, but also the less tangible effects of an electronic network on health, social capital and community well-being.

From Kreuzberg to Marzahn: New Migrant Communities in Berlin

Ethnic enclaves in West Berlin and now, East Berlin are located in denigrated areas of high unemployment, poverty, and devalued or high-rise public housing, but they are also places where immigrants are slowly integrating into the larger city and German society. Despite different national origins and different conditions and periods in which they arrived, socially excluded Vietnamese, Russian, and other migrants to East Berlin are following local incorporation paths surprisingly similar to those of the Turks in West Berlin. In both Kreuzberg and Marzahn, the rise of multicultural forms and events, economic niches, and ethnic associations make local life attractive and ultimately, contribute to immigrant incorporation and neighborhood revitalization.

Demolition of High-Rise Public Housing Increases Particulate Matter Air Pollution in Communities of High-Risk Asthmatics

Public housing developments across the United States are being demolished, potentially increasing local concentrations of particulate matter (PM) in communities with high burdens of severe asthma. Little is known about the impact of demolition on local air quality. At three public housing developments in Chicago, IL, PM with an aerodynamic diameter <10 μm (PM10) and <2.5 μm were measured before and during high-rise demolition. Additionally, size-selective sampling and real-time monitoring were concurrently performed upwind and downwind of one demolition site. The concentration of particulates attributable to demolition was estimated after accounting for background urban air pollution. Particle microscopy was performed on a small number of samples. Substantial increases of PM10 occurred during demolition, with the magnitude of that increase varying based on sampler distance, wind direction, and averaging time. During structural demolition, local concentrations of PM10 42 m downwind of a demolition site increased 4- to 9-fold above upwind concentrations (6-hr averaging time). After adjusting for background PM10, the presence of dusty conditions was associated with a 74% increase in PM10 100 m downwind of demolition sites (24-hr averaging times). During structural demolition, short-term peaks in real-time PM10 (30-sec averaging time) occasionally exceeded 500 μg/m3. The median particle size downwind of a demolition site (17.3 μm) was significantly larger than background (3 μm). Specific activities are associated with real-time particulate measures. Microscopy did not identify asbestos or high concentrations of mold spores. In conclusion, individuals living near sites of public housing demolition are at risk for exposure to high particulate concentrations. This increase is characterized by relatively large particles and high short-term peaks in PM concentration.

High-rise Living in Singapore Public Housing

In recent years, amid the debates of sustainable development and urban compactness, there has been a widening interest to reintroduce high-rise living in cities. Several European cities including London and Manchester are once again building high-rise housing as part of their urban housing strategy. Elsewhere, in Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are distinguished by their high-rise public housing developments. With nearly half of the world's population living in urban areas, the unfolding trend is towards a more urban-style development with taller buildings included as an inevitable housing solution. Drawing on findings from a study of Singapore public housing residents' living experience, this paper aims to look at the increasingly important question of the liveability of high-rise living by discussing the occupants' appreciation and concerns of high-rise.

Application of advanced glazing to high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong

The energy saving that can be achieved by applying advanced glazing to a typical high-rise residential building in Hong Kong was evaluated using the simulation software EnergyPlus. It was found that application of low-e glazing would lead to a reduction in cooling electricity use by up to 4.2%. The saving due to application of low-e reversible glazing would be up to 1.9%; double-clear glazing up to 3.7%; and clear plus low-e glazing up to 6.6%. The achievable saving would depend on orientation of building wings, and type and location of rooms. The analysis suggests that for the high-rise public housing blocks in Hong Kong, the use of expensive advanced glazing would not be economically viable from the point of view of saving in cooling energy cost.

Making a Community Network Sustainable: The Future of the Wired High Rise

Much time and money has been committed by governments, private business, and the third sector over the last 5 years in establishing opportunities for underserved populations to gain access to new forms of information and communication technologies, in an effort to overcome the so-called “digital divide.” This article traces the efforts that have been made to establish a networked community at a single high-rise public housing estate in inner Melbourne, Australia, and considers some of the potential opportunities for and barriers to ensuring the continuity of the network, which is large, complex, costly, and potentially fragile, into the future.

Single-period location models for subsidized housing: Project-based subsidies

Large urban public housing authorities (PHAs) in the US have abandoned the traditional model of high-rise public housing developments and increasingly use lower-density project-based subsidized housing as well as tenant-based housing subsidies to provide affordable shelter. PHAs generally apply practitioner expertise to locate subsidized housing and do not identify housing alternatives using prescriptive planning models that optimize policy criteria and incorporate well-defined stakeholder impacts. Using policy characteristics and estimated economic impacts of subsidized housing, a new single-period multi-objective integer programming model for location of project-based subsidized housing is developed. Data requirements, relationships with standard planning models, solution characteristics and sensitivity analyses are examined. It is shown that this model gives planners considerable flexibility in choosing alternative housing configurations that can satisfy the needs of various interest groups.

From Prisons to Penthouses: The Changing Images of High-Rise Living in Melbourne

The high-rise housing market in Melbourne has been undergoing dramatic growth in the last ten years. This emerging housing style is in stark contrast to the familiar traditional low-density suburban dwelling scouring Australian metropolitan cities. This paper traces the representations of high-rise housing since its first appearance in the 1960s to today. Discourses of high-rise housing that have seen this housing type change from one characterised by urban decay and family disorganisation to that which unproblematically glorifies this new housing form will be explored. These new and inviting images of high-rise living today are juxtaposed with the understandings of high-rise public housing that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. High-rise public housing was once seen as a solution to housing the impoverished and arresting the spread of slum conditions. High-rise housing today is being celebrated amongst government, developers, planners and occupiers as saving the inner city from decay and indicative of a re-vitalised CBD.