Abstract
A remarkable and quite neglected form of street theater plays each day in the heart of the central city. It pits the coping efforts of inner-city residents against the inexorable transformation of the urban ghetto. Gradually, the old tenement neighborhood boasting a robust social life is being replaced by high-rise housing projects distinguished instead by social isolation. Jacobs (1961) describes eloquently the vivid contrast between the social vitality of the ghetto and the psychological barrenness of the new high-rise projects. The Pruitt-Igoe houses in St. Louis, which were hailed as a modern design achievement, have become notorious for their almost total failure to function effectively at a social psychological level (Rainwater, 1968; Yancy, 1971). Newman (1972) has recently documented the consistent relationship between low social cohesion and high crime level typical in high-rise public housing. Gans (1962) has concluded that too often the physical changes of urban renewal fail to substantially improve the lives of the poor.
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© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
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Holahan, C.J. (1978). Street Life and High-Rise Public Housing. In: Environment and Behavior. The Plenum Social Ecology Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2430-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2430-0_2
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