Designing Community Space in Mixed-Income Housing

Prof. Lawrence Vale

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

August 2004

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Which Mix?

• Mixing income extremes or a continuum?

• Mixing source-of-income?

• Mixing ages and family structures?

• Mixing races?

• Mixing uses? (i.e., beyond mixing people)

• Who should benefit from redeveloped public housing?

Which goal?

• Wholesale replacement of one community with another?

• OR-- Nurturing and rewarding the best elements of a distressed community with new resources?

Values Drive Design Choices

• Are poor people regarded (by developers) as something to minimize or ‘cope with’? OR are they seen as deserving of better living conditions?

• Do programming and design efforts genuinely engage existing residents? OR are these new communities planned for someone else?

USHA, Planning the Site (1939)

Public Housing site designers resisted engagement with streets andavoided any space that was not either wholly public or wholly private.

Minimum Spacing StandardsBetween Public Housing Buildings

1 Story 50 Feet

2 Story 55 Feet

3 Story 60 Feet

4 Story 65 Feet

6 Story 75 Feet

Source: United States Housing Authority, Planning the Site: Design of Low-Rent Housing Projects (1939), later codified in Federal Public Housing Authority, Minimum Physical Standards and

Criteria for the Planning and Design of FPHA-Aided Urban Low-Rent Housing (1945).

Plan “D,” Judged to be the Lowest Cost

By 1945, Many Different Kinds of Public Housing Site Plans Prevailed, as Open Space Became More Prominent

Distressed Public Housing (in Boston) by 1980

Two Examples of Re-designed Public Housing in Boston

• Harbor Point--formerly Columbia Point, 1502 units, built in 1954 and redeveloped 1978-1990

• Commonwealth (aka “Fidelis Way”), 648 units, built in 1951 and redeveloped 1980-1985

“When I took office in 1993 there was no better example in the country of what was possible, of literally going

from worst to first, than Harbor Point. Harbor Point was the pioneer, the

trailblazer. It gave us confidence.”

--Henry Cisneros

“The community is not interested in being planned for;

the community is interested in planning”

--Columbia Point resident Terry Mair

“Subsidized residents treat this more like a neighborhood, doing things out on the porches, in

the streets, on the grass, as opposed to shorter-term residents whose domain is really just their units,

They’re only in the common spaces as they go and come from their units. That’s a different way of

using space. And if we decide that we’re going to police and patrol things like noise, things like kids,

things like ‘black presence’—this becomes problematic.”

--April Young (resident anthropologist at Harbor Point)

Boston’s Commonwealth Development

Rendering and View from the early 1950s

Commonwealth Development in the 1950s

Commonwealth Development in the early 1970s:Still Socially Viable

By the late 1970s, Many Abandoned Public Housing Apartments Were Vandalized Even Before They Could be Re-Rented

Commonwealth:Before……….. and After

Revitalization by Design

Re-landscaping Commonwealth Development, 1980s

Commonwealth Development under Private Management, 1990s

Children Also Help Set Rules for Community Behavior

Conclusions

• Successful new communities are built from the successful parts of older communities.

• Design process matters as much as design products.

• Public space must be planned for and managed through agreed-upon norms.

• New communities should be city pieces, not enclaves.

• Private spaces should provide informal surveillance of public places.