Million Dollar Blocks

Abstract

Public housing in today's society is an accumulation of truths. These truths are a construct of institutions that are vastly different and sometimes conflicting but control and arrange life within the community. Public housing has transformed into a place of actual and perceived boundaries which constrict the control residents possess within the housing and its surroundings. The lack of control socially segregates, isolates, and stigmatizes residents as well as creates a dangerous environment. The residents' exclusion from outside communities prohibits them from functioning cohesively within society. With the objective of reducing crime rates, this thesis focuses on the physical environment's ability to transform the strict boundaries which separate public and private space within public housing. Blurring the influence of existing private spaces will give residents the ability to express territoriality within the public housing complex. A new order will be generated through localized interrelationships of private and public spaces. This environmental transformation will give residents among the public housing a sense of territoriality and the ability for self surveillance within their community. Inducing modes of habitation found outside of the public housing paradigm will return much needed control of space to the residents within the community.