The Right to the City

The symbolic launch of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation, the City’s sweeping overhaul of its public housing, took place on December 12, 1998, more than a year before it was formalized as policy and christened with its Orwellian name. On that day, amid pomp and circumstance, the city demolished four vacant public housing high-rises by imploding them.

The event received massive attention. As the day approached, media coverage was akin to that for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade or the Chicago Marathon. On the eve of the implosion, the Chicago Tribune published an article that provided a schedule, a map of the “spectator area,” and a diagram showing how the buildings had been wired with explosives. The article included an interview with a demolition specialist who explained that the explosives were placed and timed so the structure would fall straight down, with each floor landing like a pancake on those below. “We do not blow buildings up,” he said. “We let gravity tear buildings down.”

Whatever the technical complexities involved in the implosions, the reporter had no doubt about their meaning. They “will serve,” he wrote, “as a symbolic funeral” for the Chicago Housing Authority’s “policy of warehousing the poor in high-rises.” The Tribune editorial page underscored the point, hailing the event as “a televised tribute to the repeal of old mistakes and the laying of new foundations.”

Known as the Lakefront Properties, the doomed buildings were located on the South Side at the edge of Lake Shore Drive. Each was 16 stories tall and contained 150 apartments. The plan was to replace them with a “mixed income community.”

The implosion was scheduled to begin shortly after 8:00 am. The day was bright and clear; unseasonably mild for mid-December, with a brisk wind from the west.

The best vantage point was a sliver of parkland along the lakefront east of the Drive directly across from the buildings. People approached this spot from the north and from the south.

The first building to be demolished at Stateway Gardens with the downtown Chicago skyline in the background.

PHOTO BY PATRICIA EVANS

They came on foot, having left their cars some distance away, for there was little parking nearby. Many had cameras and camcorders. Some had children in tow or on their shoulders. Estimated to be about 1,200, the crowd was largely composed of spectators from elsewhere in the city and the suburbs, most of them white, who would never have come to this part of the South Side under normal circumstances. Mixed among them were some former residents: people for whom the buildings had been home.

The dominant note of the gathering was celebratory. It was hard to place at first. A pilgrimage? A sporting event? It occurred to me later that what it most resembled was a public execution.

In preparation for the implosion, agile Bobcat bulldozers had pushed down the interior walls of the high-rises. The eviscerated structures had then been wired with explosives. A big yellow banner reading “Brandenburg Demolition” was strung across the front of one of the buildings.

Carefully choreographed by the City, the meaning of the spectacle was encapsulated in a simple equation:

public housing high-rises = multiple urban ills

ergo: demolition = progress

The press was present in force, with cameras poised and at the ready to broadcast that message far and wide.

A viewing stand had been erected for dignitaries. They included HUD officials, local politicians and representatives of Chicago philanthropy. In a brief ceremony, several spoke of the significance of the event.

“This is the beginning of a new era,” said a HUD spokesperson.

“We look forward,” declared a MacArthur Foundation executive, “to a triumphant future.”

The crowd chanted a countdown—“three, two, one, zero!”—and the explosives were detonated. The noise was surprisingly loud. Ten seconds passed. Three buildings gave way and collapsed, then a few seconds later the fourth. Their structural integrity was undone in an instant, yet the materials that composed them hung suspended in the air like someone mortally wounded...