3. Maintenance & Management
“It was like an oasis in the dessert, all this newness. I never thought I would live in that kind of a surrounding”-Anon, 2011
Experiences with the management and maintenance of high-rises in the past have shown that high-rise housing is difficult and complicated to manage. Privately owned, luxury, high-rise apartment buildings have their own mechanisms to maintain the building which includes adequate funding. The situation becomes vastly more complicated when it comes to low-income high-rise housing. With the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, a decline of the occupancy rate and a difficulty in collecting rent from low-income residents resulted in a reduction of the funds available for maintenance, which led to a decline
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Defensible space gone wrong
Upon being interviewed about his experiences while living in Pruitt-Igoe, an anonymous man, 2011, said that “It was a safe place where kids could truly be free to play. You knew the people around you, you were never alone. You were never afraid… at least, not in the beginning”.
Oscar Newman published the book ‘Defensible Space’ in the year of the first Pruitt-Igoe demolition. Elements identified in his book that create spaces which are not only indefensible but also dangerous are lack of layering, thin barrier between private and public spaces, lengthy passages, and a lack of straight-line views whilst moving through public spaces. In Pruitt-Igoe, residents had to leave the relative safety of the street and enter the project grounds without knowing what lay ahead. Access to the building required entering the project’s interior, navigating around various corners before finally being able to see the lobby of their own building. This was not necessarily a problem in the beginning whilst the project was still thriving, nonetheless it became a serious issue as gangs began to hijack many of the essentially empty shells of Pruitt-Igoe. The building became unable to defend itself against vandalism. All recreational spaces were open to the public, creating an environment of menace due to this permeability. It was defensible only in the sense that gangs could easily see where police were approaching