Originally Posted by
Bham1982
I don't know about that. The "projects", and slum renewal in general, were supported by both progressives and business interests. It was basically the consensus among decision makers of the time.
And, while I agree that urban renewal generally sucked, I think we're painting too broad a brush. The slums that were demolished were pretty awful, and often were firetraps and didn't have full indoor plumbing. The U.S. still had pretty horrific slums prior to urban renewal, it doesn't any more [[at least not in the classic sense of tumbledown cold water tenements).
The replacement housing was modern, spacious, well-built, with parks and schools and open space. Yeah, it went to hell very fast, but much of that was due to stupid tenancy preference rules, lack of maintenance funds, and white flight.
Public housing in NYC, even today, is pretty decent. They have generally maintained the system, and suffered less middle class flight. The housing shortage means that middle class households live in public housing. Not sure if the city would have been better off just keeping tumbledown slums.