“Towers of Dreams: One Ended in Nightmare” by Michael Kimmelman brought about a wide variety of emotions. It spoke of two projects under similar circumstances, where one was and still is very successful, and the other was demolished due to failure. Kimmelman makes a very strong point, about how architecture is relevant in terms of the success of urban projects, but this ultimately relies on many other factors. He mentioned that the designer of Pruitt-Igoe, Minoru Yamasaki, also designed the World Trade Center. I believe the World Trade Center vividly evokes the reliance of architecture on outside factors. For decades, the World Trade Center was the face of New York City, and symbolized it’s financial dominance. Nobody would’ve thought two airplanes would be able to bring them both down. This was something completely out of the control of Yamasaki, but it ultimately decided the fate of his project.

The chapter from Public Housing Myths by Joseph Heathcott that we read also took very close looks into Pruitt-Igoe, and New York City’s public housing as a whole. While  Heathcott does provide structural problems with Pruitt-Igoe like unorthodox elevators and a lack of bathrooms that are utilized as scapegoats when discussing the project, he ultimately agrees with Kimmelman, and concludes that problems completely unrelated to structure and architecture lead to the downfall of all major urban renewal plans during this period. The primary issues with public housing were identical to the problems facing the cities themselves at the time. Capital leaving the city in the form of white flight and suburbanism took its toll, and the poor policy establishment and implementation that brought the cities down, brought public housing down with it.