pruitt igoe - so help us

A photo to the entrance of the Pruitt-Igoe site in St. Louis, Missouri. There's a design competition to try to come up with ideas of what to do with the site which I'm thinking of entering. The fact that I know almost nothing about site design and master planning doesn't bother me. I could go off on a tear now about how this is another tired tale about the hollowing out of American cities, but I'm too tired to go into that.

What do we do with the empty spaces inside old American cities? Will they ever fill up again? I'm leaning away from traditional architecture on this issue. Where is the demand? What do people want? Holding onto property that may have some hypothetical value in the far distant future betrays the needs and desires of the present.

Final thought on the Manhattan grid. I should be more aggressive in pointing out that its geometric regularity has nothing to do with democratic values. Such comparisons reach too far. The substance of New York is inequality, which in the case of everyone striving for something better is not necessarily a bad thing. The layout of the streets has tended to reinforce inequality in a systemic way. The first one now may later be last, but I'm nor sure I'll live long enough to see it, especially there.