High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing

Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of twenty thousand?all of it packed onto just seventy acres situated a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, though, it was also a much-needed resource?it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, this island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, and the families dispersed.