Preface

Figures and Tables

1. Introduction: Reclaiming Public Housing

Public Housing: Critics and Apologists

Public Neighborhoods

Public Housing as Constructed Communities

The Stigma of the Projects

Public Housing Transformations: Public and Private

Public Housing in Boston

Pressures on Public Housing

Three Boston Public Neighborhoods

2. West Broadway: Public Housing for "Lower-End" Whites

South Boston's Lower End before Public Housing

Public Housing and South Boston's Lower End, 1935-1965

The D Street Wars

Assaults on the Project

Assaults by the Press

The Residents Fight Back

The Fight for Redevelopment

Success and Distress

3. Franklin Field: Public Housing, Neighborhood Abandonment, and Racial Transition

Franklin Field's Origins: The Geography of Marginality

Housing Veterans on Franklin Field

The Long Decline

Lurching toward Redevelopment

The Limits of Redeveloped Housing

Accounting for Failure

4. Commonwealth: Public Housing and Private Opportunities

Boston's "Wild West": Brighton before Public Housing

Public Housing on Brighton's Last Farm

Fidelis Way, Scourge of the Neighborhood

Redevelopment Partnership: A Three-Way Street

Assessing "Success"

5. Reclaiming Housing, Recovering Communities: A Comparison of Neighborhood Struggles

Trajectories of Collapse

Trajectories of Redevelopment

Seven Kinds of Success

Expanding and Applying the Measures of Success

Recovering Communities

Signs of Life?

Note on Literature and Methods

Notes

Credits

Index