MartinHafer The Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis is the focus of this film, but it could have just as soon been Cabrini-Green in Chicago or any one of a number of similar projects across the American big cities. It's an exploration as to why these huge public housing projects became hellish instead of the paradises they were originally envisioned. Fortunately, the filmmakers don't pick any one or two simple answers but talk about the multitude of issues that led to the projects failing...and ultimately being demolished. Among the problems discussed in the film were the lack of jobs as businesses and middle classes migrated to the suburbs, the increase of violence and vandalism, lack of maintenance, segregation as well as the insane notion that in order to get public assistance that fathers could not remain in the home! This documentary is depressing and few folks would enjoy watching it. Now I am NOT saying it's bad and it's good for folks to become familiar with the issues that come up in the film. But it's just not the sort of thing most people would choose to watch and is probably more a film that educators might show to sociology or other such classes in order to explain the failures of these programs. Interesting and well made...despite it being such a terrible story.

jasonmcce The Pruitt Igoe Myth What was meant to be an innovative solution to St. Louis's low class housing woes turned into a disaster of unimaginable heights. The St. Louis Pruitt Igoe housing project has been widely unrecognized as an issue of such devastating proportions. The significance of this disaster was portrayed through The Pruitt Igo Myth, which finally brought attention to this controversial issue regarding public housing. The documentary argued that the housing project was founded on the government's good intentions to help the city, yet was bound to fail from the beginning. Further, the documentary argued that the project failed in large part due to the economic downturn in St. Louis and the change in the structuring of city housing. Although the public housing system had its downfalls, such as breaking up the family structure, the interviews with previous Pruitt Igoe residents showed there was a community feeling to Pruitt Igoe that many will never forget. Through original research and interviews with those involved, The Pruitt Igoe Myth served to enlighten viewers regarding issues of urban renewal and the restructuring of St. Louis to benefit those in positions of power.In the 1940's, the slums of St. Louis were a significant problem for the low-class communities in the city and needed to be dealt with in a way that would not leave the cities residents abandoned. Slumlords let conditions worsen to the point of no return. They used this issue to their advantage as they made a profit from the residents. The government and city officials agreed that the slums were an eye-sore that was detrimental to the city and this issue needed to be dealt with in a productive way. The government had an idea of urban renewal and came up with the 1949 Housing Act that funded slum clearance, FHA insured mortgage programs, as well as funded the construction of over 800,000 public housing units across the U.S. Pruitt Igoe consisted of 33 high-rise buildings that were supposed to provide safe and affordable homes for the low-class community to live comfortably. The issue that this documentary made apparent is that the Housing Act provided the funds to build these projects but did not provide funding to maintain them.During the post war times, St. Louis's economy was at a terribly, steady downfall. The population drastically declined between the 1930's and the 1940's. The film described the upward growth that allowed people to leave the harsh urban areas and spread out to the newly developed suburban areas on the outskirts of town. Many middle class families left the cities in hopes of better communities and properties. This led to less property and city taxes in the urban areas, ultimately resulting in less city maintenance. Abandoned lower class individuals were stuck with deteriorating public housing and had to deal with vandals and increasing crime. The welfare department also began setting rules and regulations for the people who were receiving aid; these rules led to the creation of more issues. The department made the rule that any family having an able bodied adult male present was not allowed to receive aid and live in the housing projects. Only single women with children and no spouse were aloud to reside there. Too many children were raised without a fatherly figure so that the rest of the family could have a roof over their heads. The welfare department also said that they were not allowed to have televisions or phones in their homes either. This was a way for the government to further isolate the people they had already isolated from the rest of the community. Social conflict theory, based on Marxist thinking, can be applied to this situation. It seems as though this housing project was a way to keep the poor in poverty, while benefiting the interests of the wealthy and those in control of the system. This sense of hopelessness and isolation led to a prison like environment that only further hampered the sense of family ties that were so desired. The residents of Pruitt Igoe found themselves in a prison they could not escape because of their income restraints.The documentary did a good job of covering every side of the story when it comes to interviews with residents that once lived there and people of power that were involved in making decisions about the housing unit. The interviews throughout the documentary gave viewers first hand accounts of the stories of the residents at Pruitt Igoe. Contrasting interviews from residents with that of the public housing officers, showed that although the conditions were not optimal, residents saw Pruitt Igoe as their home where they created lifelong memories, especially the female resident interviewees. It is important to hear the residents' perspective because they were the ones that were first hand living in the conditions that were seen as awful to the outside eye. Regardless of this, many of the interviewed residents saw Pruitt Igoe as a home, where they had their own rooms and had a bed to sleep on at night. These children made memories just as other neighborhood children did. They made friends, got into fights occasionally, but in the end they made lasting memories with other children in the same situation as themselves. The male and female interviewees had slightly different views on the housing units, as it seems the males felt more pressure to take on the father figure role of the family, which sometimes led to violent interactions between residents. One of the male interviewees showed that Pruitt Igoe was more of a nightmare to him because he lost his brother to violence within the community there. This showed how unstable the environment really was, and how much pressure the males felt to put on a display of extreme masculinity in order to survive.The Pruitt Igoe Myth shed a painfully real incident to light that could have ultimately been avoided but ended up only being a learning experience.

eliaselmet The Pruitt-Igoe Myth attempts to dispel some of the myths about that infamous housing complex in St. Louis. In particular it targets the inaccurate public perception of why government housing projects fail, while at the same time taking into account how the residents themselves felt about what they called home. In order to tackle the complexity of the issue, the documentary is structured in a chronological way, starting in the 1940's and concluding at the destruction of the complex in the 1970's.Pruitt-Igoe was commissioned to battle the lack of competent housing in St. Louis. To give a bit of background, St. Louis was a bustling industrial city for the first half of the 20th century. After a slump during the Great Depression, expectations were high for the growth of the city. The documentary emphasizes this idea of growth. It claims there was a culture of growth in St. Louis, with huge expectations of economic activity and population increases. Pruitt-Igoe was commissioned and built within this culture of growth. It was envisioned to replace the tenements that housed tens of thousands of poor residents throughout the city, and concentrate them within 33 high-rises on a large piece of urban land. There was great faith in Pruitt-Igoe. It was essentially supposed to be a solve-all. By adding competent housing into the equation, planners thought that these poor people would have a solid base to move up the socio-economic ladder, since the expectation was that jobs would be available. However, no one was able to envision the terror that was to strike St. Louis; the growth that was expected within the city did not happen.What occurred instead was the de-industrialization of the city. Though the causes of this de-industrialization are debatable, the documentary attributes it to a phenomenon called suburban sprawl. This storyline is not particular to St. Louis however, and similar effects were seen across the nation.The new level of post-war prosperity allowed millions of whites across the nation to afford green lawns and quiet communities in newly built sub-divisions. Industries followed these blue-collar workers, and cities were devastated. St. Louis lost 20% of its population by 1970. Cities like Detroit and Cleveland lost closer to a third. The tax bases of these cities were destroyed. Pruitt-Igoe was built with federal funds but maintained by rent income and local taxes. When the money dried up, which it did right away, the complex was left on its own. The residents blamed the Housing Authority, the Housing Authority blamed the city of St. Louis, St. Louis blamed the federal government, and the documentary blames white-flight. So why exactly did whites move? Some, including myself, would argue it was simple economics, because cheaper land was available outside city limits and the automobile made it possible to live in the suburbs and commute to work. The emerging middle class no longer had to live near industrial zones. However, the documentary contends that it was racially based. One white middle aged woman, when asked why she moved to the suburbs, replied "because I wanted to live in a white community." She went on to say that though she did not believe blacks should be oppressed, she could not live next to them. Another white woman interviewed expressed her fear of plummeting property values and crime when blacks moved into adjacent neighborhoods. No doubt the makers of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth included these interviews to advance the claim that Pruitt-Igoe failed due to racism. Yet this opinion seems to be on the fringe of moderate consensus, because where one chooses to live does not directly affect the life of another. Blacks were just as poor when whites lived in the city. The only difference was that in the case of Pruitt-Igoe, they were living in un-maintained high-rises built by whites. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe actually resulted from the ignorance of planners who did not consider the longevity of a place filled with the poorest of the poor. There was no way that these people would be able to maintain the buildings without federal aid. The city of St. Louis, faced with a plummeting population and tax base, could not do so either. The thesis of the documentary is that the failure of Pruitt-Igoe, though a disaster in itself, does not reflect disaster in every federally funded housing project. Though the cause of defending federal housing projects is admirable, the documentary makes the too-obvious argument that Pruitt-Igoe failed due to white-negligence. This sort of finger pointing does nothing to advance the situation of blacks. Nor does it take into account the very racist and segregationist nature of America in the first place. The majority of white Americans, both before and after Pruitt-Igoe, preferred to live in white communities. This is a trend that we still see to this day. So as long as planners huddle poor people into certain areas and expect something magical to happen, basic economics will reign supreme and these people will remain poor.

akeason1 The Pruitt-Igoe housing projects are currently remembered as one of the worst disasters in federal housing history. There has been ample debate among academics as to why, ranging from architectural problems to poor planning to demographic shifts in the city of St. Louis. This new documentary mostly looks at the latter two ideas and does not interview architects but rather former residents of the projects. Their stories vary from uplifting to tragic and detail the many problems with Pruitt-Igoe. Mostly the film suggests that the depopulation of the city following the explosion of suburban society in the 1950s is to blame for the project's failure. With fewer people there was less of a need for the massive buildings and with a smaller tax base it was impossible to maintain the expensive structures. What the film does show is that most of the people who lived there were decent folks hoping to make a new life, and that it was mostly the outside world that undermined the projects. The director uses several excellent shots including the image of the collapsing towers (they were demolished in the 1970s). Overall he does a superb job of telling a very intriguing and moving story while stimulating a debate on the future of federal housing.