| Contents |
1. Introduction: reclaiming public housing -- Public housing: critics and apologies -- Public neighborhoods -- Public housing as constructed communities -- The stigma of the projects -- Public housing transformations: public and private -- Public housing in Boston -- Pressures on public housing -- Three Boston public neighborhoods -- 2. West Broadway: public housing for "lower-end" whites -- South Boston's lower end before public housing -- Public housing and South Boston's lower end, 1935-1965 -- The D Street wars -- Assaults on the project -- Assaults by the press -- The residents fight back -- The fight for redevelopment -- Success and distress -- 3. Franklin Field: public housing, neighborhood abandonment, and racial transition -- Franklin Field's origins: the geography of marginality -- Housing Veterans on Franklin Field -- The long decline -- Lurching toward redevelopment -- The limits of redeveloped housing -- Accounting for failure -- 4. Commonwealth: public housing and private opportunities -- Boston's "wild west": Brighton before public housing -- Public housing on Brighton's last farm -- Fidelis way, scourge of the neighborhood -- Redevelopment partnership: a three-way street -- Assessing "success" -- 5. Reclaiming housing, recovering communities: a comparison of neighborhood struggles -- Trajectories of collapse -- Trajectories of redevelopment -- Seven kinds of success -- Expanding and applying the measures of success -- Recovering communities -- Signs of life? |
