I saw Lawrence Vale this afternoon at the Urban Studies Annual Lecture. He provided a thoughtful comparison between the initial burst of public housing in American cities and the recent demolition of these same projects. It was an impressive talk, considering how much he covered in such a short time.

My question, had I the courage to ask it amidst a mutinous undergraduate crowd:

Most of the public housing built was accompanied by various institutions: health centers, rec centers, schools; planners incorporated some of these institutions into their designs while others came from external agencies. What happened to these resources when the PJs came down? Had they already become irrelevant? Have they been renegotiated and given a new lease? Have they been destroyed along with the rest of the development?

He talked some about the social networks and acknowledged different viewpoints about the social capital in public housing (some have claimed that any new housing would be better) but it seems to me that at least some of the answer lies with the fate of these “other” institutions.