Postwar public housing in the United States looms large in respect to its social and racial implications. From the 1940s through the end of the 1970s, a series of high-rise developments were constructed in Chicago Illinois. Specifically, I want to take a look at the Cabrini-Green development and the Robert Taylor Homes taking into consideration the text Spatializing Blackness by Rashad Shabazz.
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| Graffiti on the wall of a Cabrini-Green Building |
Cabrini-Green much like the Robert Taylor Homes (RTH), were high-rise development buildings that were constructed for the purpose of reducing violence while providing a home for low-income earners. However, the intended purpose for these developments often left its tenants in oppressive and violent environments. High-rise housing refers to buildings that exceed at least 13 stories (Bureau of Planning, 2013). With that in mind, we can start to take into perspective the capacity that the urban structures provided. Thousands of people stacked on top of one another - sound familiar? Shabazz creates a strong argument in comparing urban developments as structures holding strong carceral power; they are prisons. Stigmas already attached to the area in which both Cabrini-Green and the RTH were built seeped into its social structure. Contributing to such carceral power, as Shabazz mentions, is city planning and architecture.
How does architecture influence such social and racial implications in urban settings?
Le Corbusier the designer of RTH, “thought that American cities needed management, and he sought to do precisely that through planning” (Shabazz, 2015). An element one could consider is who is the person in charge making these decisions and who are they supposed to benefit? In part with a grandiose plan of urban renewal, the Housing Act was implemented removing the African American population out of areas the city deemed as slums (Shabazz, 2015). With the population disenfranchised grounds were clear so carceral power was enabled. The Robert Taylor Homes as Shabazz writes, “As Blacks were seen as criminally inclined, managing this criminality and containing the residents was a central function of the RTH’s architecture” (Shabazz, 2015). In the eyes of RTH's developers there was something unjust about the way the tenants were received, but it's important to point out, an individual is able to succeed as much as the environment allows. Le Corbusier thought open space would create community and bring people together but, in the Robert Taylor Homes it only created isolation (Shabazz, 2015). Conversely to the experiences of the RTH, tenants of Cabrini-Green were able to find a sense of community; camaraderie in hardship. To them, Cabrini-Green was a community with problems, but not a “problem community” or a “slum” (Vale, 2012).
It is important to have a discussion about architecture. Although buildings are “simple structures," they can provoke so much emotion (Shabazz, 2015). We want to consider all of those who could use the space now and in the future, something that failed with both postwar public housing developments.
Resources:
Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, et. al. 2013. Portland, Oregon. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/564018
Lawrence Vale, “Housing Chicago: Cabrini-Green to Parkside of Old Town,” Places Journal, February 2012. Accessed 30 Oct 2019. https://doi.org/10.22269/120220
Shabazz, Rashad. 2015. “Carceral Interstice: Between Home Space and Prison Space.” Chapter 3 in Spatializing Blackness. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
I'm glad you introduced an additional example that illustrates some of what Shabazz discusses. For me, what was most interesting about how Shabazz frames the relationship between the RTH and carceral power was by positioning this development on a kind of continuum between home and prison; constituting an "interstitial space" that exhibits characteristics of both. In highlighting these interstitial spaces, Shabazz demonstrates how carceral power operates with a kind of logic of containment that can manifest geographically through planning, architecture, and security measures.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading Shabazz, I was struck both by the social implications of the kind of architecture you discuss in your post and the ways that these material features impact black subjectivity and citizenship (p. 69). The highly securitized, isolating structure of social housing projects like the RTH (and Cabrini-Greene) prepare residents for prison, severely curtailing the possibilities for residents to imagine other possibilities for themselves (p. 71). Understanding how profoundly these denials of spatial justice have been for been for these communities underscores the importance of consciously resisting reifying hierarchies in development and design.