Pruitt Igoe - History of a Failed Public Housing

Pruitt Igoe has become a symbol of the failure of public housing in the U.S. It was a large public housing project in St. Louis, MO, designed by a modernist architect Minoru Yamasaki, who is known for his monumental design of the World Trade Center towers. Since it started to be occupied in 1954, many social problems concentrated in the area and the authorities finally decided to demolish it.
After World War II and during the Cold War, the U.S. grappled with the lack of housing for low-income households. The ambitious project started in this period. The idea was that the U.S. could provide numerous low-income households with better quality of housing than Soviet Union did. The 33 apartment towers of 11-story could accommodate 2,870 households, and were equipped with large communal corridors, laundry rooms, communal rooms and garbage chutes.
But the reality was not that easy. The high concentration of the poor and disadvantaged coupled with lack of financial resources led to a high concentration of social problems such as vandalism, drugs, and crimes.
The modernist approach to solve the housing problem was not a success at all. They did not take into account how the residents would perceive themselves and the area, and how they would interact with each other. Abstract supply and demand analysis could not capture the complicated reality.
Here is a brief but well documented history of Pruitt Igoe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYrMUcT1jP4&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-1r-8-HM