Transit Miami

On Northwest 68th Terrace, a street in the heart of the neighborhood with 17 houses, nine homeowners reported having something stolen from their property or had property vandalized in the last month.

The list of stolen property includes: childrens’ bicycles that had been chained up in the backyard, car stereos, tools, yard equipment, plants and light fixtures. Resident Margaret Brown had her Nissan Altima stolen from her driveway.

One quote in particular really sums up this myth:

Many of the 50 families living in the subdivision off Northwest 22nd Avenue and 68th Street expected it to be an island of suburbia floating in an area known for its hardscrabble ways.

They worked together to plant the trees, paint the houses and popcorn the ceilings. When the neighborhood opened, it was heralded as a ray of hope for the hundreds who were lied to and displaced by the county’s oft-troubled HOPE VI housing program.

However, the fact that suburban-style housing does not magically stop crime should not be a new revelation. This myth that social problems found in urban environments can be solved or mitigated by improved architecture or suburban-style design dates back to the housing reform movements of the early twentieth century.

One of the most popularized examples of this myth actually is the story of a more urban model — the Pruitt-Igoe public housing projects in St. Louis, Missouri. Pruitt-Igoe opened in 1954 as 33 eleven-story apartment buildings somewhat emulating New York City’s public housing. At the time, it was thought that the design of Pruitt-Igoe — impressive modern high-rises surrounded by large open spaces — would on its own merit be a prescriptive solution to poverty and crime. However, within a decade after opening, Pruitt-Igoe’s tower-in-the-park design had done little to curb crime or poverty, as both raged on throughout the neighborhood. As Katharine Bristol wrote in “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth”, published in the Journal of Architectural Education in 1991,

“By placing the responsibility for the failure of public housing on designers, the myth shifts attention from the institutional or structural forces of public housing problems.”

Then in 1972, just 18 years after being built, Pruitt-Igoe was demolished. Dramatic images capturing the demolition were framed to symbolize the destruction of an inhumane place and the failure of urban housing (among other things).

Though the scale and design of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and and the Scott Carver Projects in Miami (the public housing demolished to make room for Habitat Homes) are certainly different, the same faulty message has come from the razing of both communities: urban-style public housing is inherently bad and therefore facilitates crime. Of course this leads to the terribly flawed logic that suburban-style housing will somehow make everything all better. Talk about putting a cheap band-aid on a gaping wound.

(Note: I think Habitat for Humanity has a wonderful core philanthropic goal to provide housing for the needy, but its methods regarding architectural and landscape design need to be reevaluated to include better urban design).

Clearly, the suburban-style design of the Habitat Homes have not done much to eliminate crime. The article continues,

Crime data from the Miami-Dade Police Department confirms the Habitat neighborhood is not crime-free: In January, when half the homes were still under construction, the police received complaints about vandalism, burglary and car theft.

Police said updated records of crime in the neighborhood are not currently available. However, an informal Herald survey showed more than half the residents in the community had been victimized.

Judging from this article, however, it doesn’t seem like the major players understand this suburban design myth.

But the nonprofit home-building group has learned something about crime prevention from its experience at Habitat Homes, she said: Habitat leaders will look into putting security cages around air-conditioning units in the future.

Every house in the neighborhood will also get a white picket fence, courtesy of Habitat.