ABSTRACT
The failure of the project concept was commonly accepted when the widely influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,6 was published in 1961. Jane Jacobs' urban design and architectural criticisms of urban renewal and public housing during the late 1950's and early 1960's had marshaled architects and planners' opposition to conventional public housing, just as social and political criticism, by Herbert Gans,7
Harrison Salisbury8 and many others, stimulated broader public and professional opposition. The project, in its architectural and social reform intentions, was the emblem for all of the real and perceived failures of the public housing program. Public housing admissions policies, mandated income limits for residents, percentages of income payable for rent, welfare policies, excessive clearance of inner city housing and neighborhoods all contributed to the failure of public housing. The failure of public housing policy and related social welfare policy was, by definition, a failure of the project in both its social and architectural dimensions.
