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Author:

Austen, Ben, author.

Title:

High-risers : Cabrini-Green and the fate of American public housing / Ben Austen.

Edition:

First Harper paperbacks edition.

Publisher:

Harperan imprint of HarperCollins Publishers,

Copyright Date:

2019

Description:

x, 384 pages ; 21 cm

Subject:

Cabrini-Green Homes (Chicago, Ill.)--History.
Cabrini-Green High Impact Program--History.
Public housing--Chicago--Chicago--History.
Low-income housing--Chicago--Chicago--History.
Urban poor--History.--Chicago--Chicago--History.
African Americans--History.--Chicago--Chicago--History.
Inner cities--Chicago--Chicago--20th century--History.
Chicago (Ill.)--Social conditions.
Chicago (Ill.)--Race relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness.
Cabrini-Green High Impact Program.
Cabrini-Green Homes (Chicago, Ill.)
African Americans--Housing.
Inner cities.
Low-income housing.
Public housing.
Race relations.
Social conditions.
Urban poor--Housing.
Illinois--Chicago.
1900-1999
History.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-365) and index.

Contents:

Part three. The Chicago neighborhood of the future. Portrait of a Chicago slum -- The reds and the whites -- Catch-as-catch-can -- Warriors -- The mayor's pied-à-terre -- Part two. Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson ; Cabrini-Green rap -- Concentration effects -- This is my life -- Faith brought us this far -- How horror works -- Dantrell Davis Way -- Part three. Rotations on the land ; Cabrini mustard and turnip greens -- If not here. . . where? -- Transformations -- Old town, new town -- They came from the projects -- The people's public housing authority -- The Chicago neighborhood of the future.

Summary:

Braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, America's most iconic public housing project. Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000--all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource--it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed. In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America's public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly through the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex's demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation's effort to provide affordable housing to the poor--and what we can learn from those mistakes.

ISBN:

0062235079
9780062235077

Locations:

UQAX771 -- Des Moines Area Community College Library - Ankeny (Carroll)