05.18.2008 11:05 am
What were we thinking?
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Images of St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe housing project in full decline in this short segment from the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass.
Pruitt-Igoe may be a tired subject for some, and this clip likely is old hat to others, but its 2 minutes and 58 seconds offer powerful and valuable (and chilling) testament to a profound failure in urban planning — a failure we would do well not to forget.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
Pruitt Igoe, unsightly as it was, did a job at one time that needed to be done, and in a manner that was common throughout the world. Have you been to Moscow? Pruitt Igoe, and many newer and nicer public housing developments have provided other advantages to its residents, such as free copper to sell to the salvage yards.
“Similar projects were highly successful in other larger cities, but St. Louis has a unique character and political climate”. (Wikipedia)
Nice job with the explosive cutting charges.