Customer Reviews

American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Venkatesh describes his research experience at the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago in a readable and engaging style. His work, while at the University of Chicago, was a result of interviews, traditional research of literature and "hanging out." With the residents, the CHA staff, the resident leadership and the gangs which had a variety of community, business and narcotics interests.

Traditional property management services were not provided to CHA residents as a matter of right. Instead, a complicated set of rules violations (reporting income, reporting household composition), payoffs, relationship brokering, "hustle," and an underground economy emerged to get basic services (repairs, heat, security, etc.) to the residents of Robert Taylor.

In the beginning the "brokerage" was provided by the resident leadership (the Local Advisory Council)and the CHA staff. Gradually, with the emergence of the drug economy, the role was assumed by the gang/drug interests which really controlled conditions at the CHA family developments like Robert Taylor. The police and other traditional service institutions ceded their responsibilities to these interests. And public housing developments like Robert Taylor became "free crime" zones.

The CHA is presently engaged in highly innovative "Plan for Transformation" whereby all of the 25000 units of family and senior housing has been put under private management during the past year, and the CHA high rises are being vacated as part of an effort to replace them with mixed income, mixed use communities, where resident services are provided as a matter of course, and the public housing developments are to be integrated into the larger community structure of which they are a part.

It is in this area where the Venkatesh book falls short. How is the 30 year history of neglect, self help and petty crime at Robert Taylor to be integrated into this new future where marketplace services and safety will be the norm, and CHA residents will live in housing and community life which is thoroughly integrated into the mainstream economy and culture?

This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the transformation of public housing in America's major cities and the possibilities for bringing content to the concept of "compassionate conservatism" in the redevelopment of public housing dominated inner city communities.

Don Samuelson - DSSA Lawyer, developer and private manager of CHA housing

Venkatesh has done a superb job of describing the interrelationships between tenants, and the relationship between tenants and management, as well as chronicalling the changes in these relationships since Robert Taylor was constructed in the early 60's. Anyone who wants to move beyond the headlines, and find out more about the strengths and weaknesses of life in a public housing development should read this book.

That said, the author's background and training as a sociologist comes through loud and clear, and ultimately limits his book. While Venkatesh does a good job of detailing the social relationships among the players, he virtually ignores the larger political issues. Why was management so inept as to be virtually non-existent? Why did the drug/crime culture take hold, and how did the gangs transfor themselves into multi-state corporate enterprises? Most importantly, given that CHA is now in the process of demolishing virtually everyone of the buildings which form Robert taylor Homes, how do we avoid creating the same problems in the next generation of public housing.

Excellent bibliography, by the way. A very good place to dig for resources for anyone wanting to study the history of the Chicago Housing Authority since 1960.

American Project is the story of the Robert Taylor high-rise housing project built in Chicago in the 1960s for lower income blacks. Ultimately, it is a story about social control; that is, the attempt to control various criminal and delinquent acts in order to make Robert Taylor a livable community. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh traces the struggle of the residents to do so, despite poor security provided by the Chicago Housing Authority and inadequate police protection. For the first ten years efforts by the residents to maintain some sense of order worked to varying degrees but after that it was all downhill.

Most problematic was the emergence of gangs like the Blacks Kings who became more than just an ordinary street gang -- they became an organized criminal group devoted to making big money through drug deals. A significant part of book is devoted to analyzing attempts to deal with the Black Kings. Some within the community wanted to cooperate with the group conceding that there was no way to stop them from selling drugs. Hence, the only viable policy was compromise. Appeals were to the Black King's leadership to increase public safety, and these efforts worked as long as Kigs benefited. For instance, it's easier to sell any product in an atmosphere of calm rather than chaos. However, when policies were not in the interests of the group they failed, as did Robert Taylor which was eventually torn down.

I find two major weaknesses in the book: First, since social control is the primary theme of the book one would expect more that just passing references to single-parent families in that numerous studies show that when single mothers raise boys by themselves criminal activity increases. Indeed, at Robert Taylor there appears to be a relationship between the rise of gangs and increasing numbers of single parents. It is unfortuante that the author pays more attention to sexual harrassment of women by the Black Kings than single-parenthood, as if harrassment were more important to the quality of life at Robert Taylor than the impacts of single-parenthood.

The second shortcoming of the book is the fact that little attention is paid to the effects of drug taking by the residents of Roberet Taylor who were buying $45,000 worth of drugs per week from the Kings. It seems obviuous that ingesting these amounts of crack and heroin had a detrimental impact on Robert Taylor but for some reason the author largerly avoids the issue. In short, American Project is an interesting study of an urban ghetto, it is unfortunately an incomplete one.

I found Venkatesh's book to be quite compelling, yet I took issue with the book jacket's contention that it is "the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex." There was once written a book, "Behind Ghetto Walls" by Lee Rainwater in 1970, regarding the former Pruitt-Igo project in St. Louis. This book, too, is a comprehensive study on daily life in a project, and an excellent one at that.

GREAT BOOK!!!!!!!

Venkatesh provides a very detailed discussion of the infamous Robert Taylor Homes. He is sensitive and fair to those who called it home and community, but realistic as any outsider should and must be. If one only listens to the perspectives of public housing residents, particularly those displaced from distressed buildings, such as the Robert Taylor Homes, one will only get a biased account, and arrive at wrong or misguided conclusions.

Within the first several years of their existence, the Robert Taylor Homes quickly became among Chicago and the nation's worst public housing, a dubious distinction that would last until the buildings were razed several years ago. Venkatesh's historical analysis is well supported and substantiated.

"American Project" started out with the best of intentions, but along the way ,the author became a little repetitive. He should've explored the lives of the tenants a bit more. I think that would've made their situation a bit more understandable for the unaware. But, I give the author credit for trying to explain the lives,situations and forces, which keep the people disconnected from the rest of Chicago.

Sudhir Venkatesh's 'American Project' has certain strengths. For one thing, it gives an informative overview of the general conditions within the Robert Taylor Homes and how they declined between the 1960s and 1990s. For example, there are extensive quotations of Taylor's tenants, which illustrate first-hand experiences of getting along day by day and coping with deteriorating physical and social conditions. The author is able to use his field work in Chicago to bring his readers inside the housing project to a certain extent. Secondly, the book's chapter divisions are convenient for dividing the Taylor Homes' history by decade.

However, 'American Project' also has numerous weakesses.

First, there are no photos or other visuals in the entire book, making it difficult to picture the vastness of the project and what an average apartment or lobby looked like.

Second, like many sociologists, the author paints the residents of the Taylor Homes as perpetual victims of a vicious, evil, forever racist world that is responsible for all their poor living conditions. For example, in describing why some gang members decided to remain in gangs instead of working in mainstream jobs, listed among the reasons are 'white privilege that denies blacks job-promotion and career opportunities.' The author does not consider affirmative action and other programs that are designed exactly for the purpose of giving blacks and other minorities job opportunities. He also seems ignorant of the fact that during the 1980s, the unemployment rate for black teenagers fell by 21%, the number of black families earning over $50,000 per year increased from 7% to 14%, and black employment in professional and managerial occupations increased 33% (Dept. of Labor Statistics). How can blacks possibly have been systematically denied career opportunities during the 1980s given these figures? Venkatesh also writes that 'youth in this community ... have been discarded by mainstream social institutions.' Yet in these same pages he describes residents who have managed to attain college degrees and even get decent jobs working in downtown Chicago. How, then, have they been 'discarded'?

Third, the author takes a big hammer and tries to smash Ronald Reagan to pieces. The author lost lots of credibility with me on page 149 when he compares Reagan to the character played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone's movie 'Wall Street.' He portrays Reagan as a money-grabbing, heartless man who wrings his hands and chortles 'Greed is good' as the poor suffer. Contrary to popular belief, this simply isn't true.

Not only this, but the author flat out lies by stating that 'Reagan ... [refused] to direct government money to the poor and needy' (p. 149) He cites statistics that imply that the Reagan administration said 'screw the poor.' However, Venkatesh's statistics are completely misleading. According to the Congressional Budget Office ('Federal Housing Assistance and its Distribution,' Chapter 3, www.cbo.gov), national housing project OUTLAYS, which are the amounts of money actually spent on federally subsidized housing, increased steadily all through the 1980s, from $8 billion in 1981 to $16 billion in 1987 (even hitting $28 billion in 1985). Reagan is a favorite target for many people in the 'it's-always-society's-fault' crowd, yet these people themselves rarely know what they're talking about.

In short, 'American Project' seems to be a decent overview of life in a major housing project, but the trite victimization and anti-Reagan ramblings, typical of the academic Left, wear very thin.

Venkatesh is pushing the thesis that the lives of the residents in the 'projects' have been too pessimistically portrayed by other authorities, and that for long periods of time they in fact managed to get along pretty well, through various informal and often criminal survival mechanisms they developed.

That is, as I say, his thesis. I am reminded of a story of a man who fell out the 40th story window of an office building. Mid way down, with his eyes firmly closed, he imagined himself flying.

"So far, so good," he said.

This author records comparable delusions, and the state of free-fall that of necessity must end. He thinks he is recording something better than that.