Ebook: High-Risers
Author: Austen Ben
- Tags: African Americans--Housing, African Americans--Housing--Illinois--Chicago--History, Inner cities, Inner cities--Illinois--Chicago--20th century--History, Low-income housing, Low-income housing--Illinois--Chicago--History, Public housing, Public housing--Illinois--Chicago--History, Race relations, Social conditions, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, Urban poor--Housing, Urban poor--Housing--Illinois--Chicago--History, History, Cabrini-Green Homes (Chicago Ill.) -- History, Cabrini-Green High Impact Prog
- Year: 2017
- Publisher: HarperCollins
- Language: English
- epub
Joining the ranks of Evicted, The Warmth of Other Sons, and classic works of literary non-fiction by Alex Kotlowitz and J. Anthony Lukas, High-Risers braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, America's most iconic public housing project.
Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000—all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource—it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.
In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America's public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of...