Why American cities need to double down on public housing

It's time to bring the projects into the 21st century

An American flag hangs from a window in an East Harlem public housing complex
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

From about the 1960s to the 1990s, the major problems in big, established American cities were declining populations and urban blight. Now, many of them are facing the opposite problem: an influx of thousands of new, middle-class residents — the dreaded gentrification.

In the main, cities have tackled the problem in two ways: twiddle thumbs, or sprawl all over creation. Liberal cities on the coasts have mainly followed the former strategy, while conservative ones in the South and the Sun Belt have chosen the latter. While the sprawl method does at least lead to reasonably affordable housing, it's not so much the result of smart planning as lots of cheap surrounding land — the coastal cities are already boxed in, so they can't sprawl like Phoenix can.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.