Purging the Poorest – Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice–Cleared Communities

“The beauty of Mr. Vale’s book is that as a scrupulous scholar he lays out his two case studies with all the careful detail you as a reader need to judge his conclusions.”– “The Wall Street Journal”

“A well-written, thought-provoking book. It adds an important historical and contextual analysis to the literature on public housing.”– “Urban Affairs Review”

“Purging the Poorest advances a fresh and convincing periodization of the history of American public housing that illuminates clear patterns in the program’s convoluted past. Lawrence J. Vale’s treatment of this subject is the most original and significant I have read.”–Gail Radford “author of Modern Housing for America”

“This is an exceptional work of original scholarship that will appeal to a wide range of historians, sociologists, political scientists, city planners, and affordable housing advocates. Its topic–public housing and its redevelopment in the past and present–examines one of the most contentious urban policies to emerge from the New Deal. Striking, thoughtful, and convincing, Vale’s account makes for engaging reading that is constantly relevant to current debates.”–D. Bradford Hunt “author of Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing”

“Through meticulous archival research and in-depth interviewing Vale examines the nexus between architectural design and the politics which undergirded the initial development of public housing, its subsequent deterioration, destruction and finally reinvention. . . . This is a great book and one that I wish the designers and advocates for mixed income public housing transformation policies would read.”–Deirdre Oakley “Journal of Urban Affairs”