Reading Kimmelman’s article on Penn South and Pruitt-Igoe has truly shaped the way I ponder about the construction sites of buildings and how the people that live there can gravely affect its future. Penn South is a high-rise housing complex in Chelsea, while the Pruitt- Igoe was a public housing complex in St. Louis, Missouri. Though these two had similar structures and beginnings as slum-clearance projects, they both had different ends. While Penn South is still up and running, standing in a very profitable area of NYC, Pruitt-Igoe has been demolished, and never to be seen in the city of St. Louis again.This is an example of social and financial capital at its finest, and how the people who live in and around these buildings truly pave the way for its future.

Pruitt-Igoe housed citizens of St. Louis and made them feel like they were living in a lavish hotel. The article states that there were so many amazing memories made at this now demolished building. However, this building soon became infamous for crime, drugs, and racial segregation. Due to the white flight draining many jobs from the inner cities, this left many minorities unemployed, while the city’s whites moved to the suburbs and got new jobs there.  The people who remained in the increasingly abandoned Pruitt-Igoe were said to be “drug dealers and murderers, broken pipes and shattered windows, set afire and adrift.” This steady decline strikingly contrasts that of Penn South, where today, apartments are being sold at $100,000. This truly made me reflect on how great of an impact racial inequality has on the longevity of a residential public housing building, as Pruitt-Igoe symbolizes the failure of public housing, while Penn South can be considered a success. Reading the sad stories of black families trying to find jobs during the white flight is truly heartbreaking and makes me wonder what became of the surrounding area of Pruitt-Igoe as years progressed.