Day: March 17, 2025

The best way I can answer that question is with ‘Pruitt-Igoe’, the failed 1954 public housing complex that was blown up and hauled off to a local landfill in 1972.

The idealistic architect Minoru Yamasaki designed Pruitt-Igeo, the World Trade Center, and many other buildings during the 1950s and 1960s. Built in the modernist style, the buildings ultimately failed to reform the people they were designed to inspire and quickly fell into disrepair and became dangerous cesspools only a few years after opening.

America is the wealthiest society in the world, we have a moral obligation to help the poor. Yet, Minoru Yamasaki idealism and plan to help the poor with beautiful high-rise buildings set in a park setting with playgrounds, stores and clean, modern apartments with running hot water, heat and flush toilets proved to be disaster that ultimately would be blown up and hauled off to the landfill. Remember, many cold-water flat tenants prior to his buildings bathed with hot-water in a bucket, with water available only in common areas. You can blame really two things — cost cutting and top-down planning that was unresponsive to community needs.

Pruitt-Igoe is emblematic of what is wrong with Big Government liberalism — a bold vision for a better tomorrow, that inevitably fails to make a better community. It’s not saying we shouldn’t help the down-trodden build a better life, but it shouldn’t come from big centralized government programs that aren’t build for unique communities. Big buildings are great for politicians to cut ribbons on, but they rarely suit community needs. Liberalism should focus on small problems at community level, and move away from big national programs that don’t reflect local community conditions.

Big ideas are impossibly expensive to implement, especially with the inflation pressures that any big program is bound to create in the economy. The high cost of implementation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help working families get ahead. But we should do it in a measured steps, making small changes to existing programs to make it better. We shouldn’t take a bulldozer to existing programs, but instead look to build on what has proven to be successful. It’s hard for politicians to take credit for small changes, but small changes are often the best way to make the world a better place for ordinary people.