From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors

Contents
......Page 10
Illustrations
......Page 12
Tables......Page 15
Introduction: The “Public” in Public Housing......Page 18
Public Housing as an American Problem......Page 23
Housing the Public Neighbor......Page 25
Public Housing in Boston......Page 26
I. The Prehistory of Public Housing......Page 34
1 Coping with the Poor: Techniques and Institutions......Page 36
The Moral Geography of Puritan Space......Page 38
New Institutions for Indoor Relief......Page 49
Tenement Reform......Page 72
Settlement Houses......Page 89
Ideal Tenement Districts......Page 106
2 Rewarding Upward Mobility: Public Lands, Private Houses, and New Communities......Page 109
Frontier Individualism on Public Lands......Page 110
Homesteads in the Boston Suburbs......Page 122
Residential Districts......Page 133
Communities by Design......Page 145
Public Neighborhoods without Public Neighbors......Page 174
II. Public Housing in Boston......Page 176
3 Building Selective Collectives, 1934–1954......Page 178
Boston’s Selective Collectives......Page 182
Public Works and Private Markets......Page 185
Public Housing as Slum Reform......Page 199
Public Housing as War Production (1940–1945)......Page 247
Public Housing as Veterans’ Assistance (1946–1954)......Page 253
The Authority Is Watching......Page 273
The Geopolitics of Public Housing......Page 284
Urban Renewal......Page 288
Rewarding the Elderly......Page 302
The Mechanisms of Patronage......Page 307
Racial Discrimination and the BHA......Page 318
Battles within the Bureaucracy......Page 342
The Decline and Fall of the BHA
......Page 349
The Receivership......Page 364
Four Redevelopment Efforts in the 1980s......Page 370
The Politics of Public Housing Preferences......Page 378
Getting Beyond Receivership......Page 382
Boston Public Housing in the 1990s......Page 386
Ideological Retrenchment......Page 398
From the Puritans to the Projects......Page 403
Notes......Page 412
Credits......Page 464
Index......Page 466