High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post — World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Projectis the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex. Venkatesh draws on his relationships with tenants, gang members, police officers, and local organizations to offer an intimate portrait of an inner-city community that journalists and the public have only viewed from a distance. Challenging the conventional notion of public housing as a failure, this startling book re-creates tenants' thirty-year effort to build a safe and secure neighborhood: their political battles for services from an indifferent city bureaucracy, their daily confrontation with entrenched poverty, their painful decisions about whether to work with or against the street gangs whose drug dealing both sustained and imperiled their lives. American Projectexplores the fundamental question of what makes a community viable. In his chronicle of tenants' political and personal struggles to create a decent place to live, Venkatesh brings us to the heart of the matter.

The general public believes the Robert Taylor Homes are an unmistakable failure. But author Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh challenges that view...It's not that most communities are free of the social ills that infect public housing but 'that we ask more of the poor, and particularly those in public housing'...[whose] good intentions [are] thwarted by poor law enforcement, diminished federal funding, thriving underground economies and increased gang violence.

American Projectexamines the Robert Taylor Homes, a high-rise public housing complex in Chicago. It records the initial hopes when the development opened in 1962 and the deterioration that later occurred...[This book] is a rich and perceptive account of the inhabitants of the project, which brings us into close contact with everyone from poor tenants to drug peddling gangs...In this vivid and compelling portrait of the project, Venkatesh describes the breakdown of the public housing effort in 20th-century America. Most important is his observation that service providers and other officials often operated in a system that limited their ability to improve conditions.

American Projectis a revealing look at what works (and what doesn't) in public housing--and why. Sudhur Alladi Venkatesh, one of the most promising young sociologists today, tells the story of one of America's most infamous housing projects, the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago...Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork within the projects themselves, American Projectis the first comprehensive story of what went wrong in one of America's first and most famous public housing projects. By engaging himself with the community, Venkatesh gets beyond a purely academic analysis and is able to illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of urban public housing both in the Robert Taylor homes and within the larger realm of urban studies. He draws on his personal relationships with tenants, and local police officers and municipal organizations--to tell the real story of the besieged inner-city community that journalists and outsiders often never see.

Venkatesh wrote American Projectto urge readers to get beyond the quantitative, statistical measure of the urban pathology of public housing and look at the 'collective memory' of the people who lived there. It's all too easy to disparage life in the projects, Venkatesh notes, but such thinking also disparages the forms of community, political organization, and ultimately the lives of those who made Robert Taylor their home...American Projectis moving, thoughtful, and written with common-sense clarity.

[This] history of Chicago's notorious Robert Taylor Homes...[describes] how this once promising program fell so low and [offers] cautionary lessons for progressives who want to devise successful social policies...Venkatesh probes beyond the headlines about Robert Taylor Homes--the shootings, murders, accidental deaths, and police sweeps--and shows us how its residents used whatever resources were at hand to adjust to adverse circumstances. The brilliance of the author's approach is that he listens sympathetically to the people who lived and worked in this massive public housing development, yet he remains scrupulously objective.

The results of Venkatesh's myriad experiences are encomapped in 332 rivetting, thought-provoking pages...Completely different from the usual sociological tracts, American Projectproffers a strong narrative and vivid stories. It offers its readers challenging insights into the lives of people in the government-subsidised [Robert Taylor] Homes. Above all, it stunningly portrays the transformation of a curious Indian-American "outsider" into an "insider" who gradually comes to understand and appreciate "the beauty of human condition" amidst squalor and violence.

American Projectexamines the Robert Taylor Homes, a high-rise public housing complex in Chicago. It records the initial hopes when the development opened in 1962 and thedeterioration that later occurred...[This book] is a rich and perceptive account of the inhabitants of the project, which brings us into close contact with everyone from poor tenants to drug peddling gangs...In this vivid and compellingportrait of the project, Venkatesh describes the breakdown of the public housing effort in 20th-century America. Most important is his observation that service providers and other officials often operated in a system that limited theirability to improve conditions.

This book gets beyond academic analysis and gives voice to residents' concerns over education and health care, as well as the lack of employment opportunities, which in turn pushes young people to the streets in search of a means of earning money. By describing inhabitants' strident efforts to unify the community and fight political battles against an often indifferent bureaucracy, Venkatesh challenges the stereotypical notion that public housing fails because its residents do.

A fascinating and rigorous explanation of a how a model of urban subsidized housing, which succeeded for 20 years, declined into disastrous conditions for its inhabitants...[American Project] is an important contribution to understanding urban poverty and will stand with classic work by Carol Stack and William Julius Wilson (who wrote the foreword). Highly recommended.

Sudhir Alladi Venkateshis Professor of Sociology and Director of Research at the <>Institute for Research in African-AmericanStudiesat <>Columbia University.

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

1. A Place to Call Home

2. Doing the Hustle

3. "What's It Like to Be in Hell?"

4. Tenants Face Off with the Gang

5. Street-Gang Diplomacy

6. The Beginning of the End of a Modern Ghetto

Author's Note

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index