Charles F. Palmer ~ Adventures Of A Slum Fighter (1955 – Full Text)

Charles Forrest Palmer (December 29, 1892 – June 16, 1973) was an Atlanta real estate developer who became an expert on public housing and organized the building of Techwood Homes, the first public housing project in the United States. He would later head up both the newly created Atlanta Housing Authority and the Chamber of Commerce.

About this book – By Beardsley
ONE OF THE most glaring obstructions to a better
life for millions of our people is the obsolete design and
structure of our cities. Already we are acutely aware that the
conditions of our metropolitan schools, hospitals, transport
and recreation facilities are intolerable. And worst of all are
the slums.

That’s why this book interests me so much. It’s the author’s
adventures in wiping out slums. These are facts, not theories,
because as a practical real-estate man he has done what he
writes about. Reading like a novel, this book proves that
slums cost us taxpayers more to keep than to clear; that the
battle against child delinquency, disease, and vice is the battle
against the slum.

The response to these ills of our cities has been wholesale
flight from the city itself, but not from the city as such. The
city remains “la source” as it has been since time immemorial.
Accordingly, the cities will not wither away; they will be
rebuilt.

The rebuilding of our cities is, therefore, one of the grand
projects for the years immediately ahead. The programs will
be varied creative and imitative. The emphasis will be here
on one objective, there on another.

Where better to start than with the slums! This book of a
businessman’s adventures tells what other countries have
been doing for years, of the little we have done, and of the
big job ahead for all of us.

The book: https://archive.org/adventuresofslum.txt

Report: St. Ann’s ~ Thames ~ 1969 ~ Nottingham Slums

Thames TV’s 1969 documentary on Nottingham’s slums, introduced here by Ray Gosling in 1993.

Housing In Dublin In Sixty Four 1964

Sixty Four: Woman speaking to John O’Donoghue about her move from Dublin city centre to new housing in Finglas.

How do current living and housing conditions in Dublin compare with 1964? The RTÉ television series ‘Sixty Four’ broadcast a report on the housing situation in Ireland’s capital city.
How do current living and housing conditions in Dublin compare with 50 years ago? In 1964 RTÉ television series ‘Sixty Four’ broadcast a report on the housing situation in Ireland’s capital city.

In this clip from the programme John O’Donoghue looks at the history of Georgian Dublin. By 1964 many of the Georgian buildings in Dublin city centre, which were built in the 18th century, were falling down, being demolished or both. O’Donoghue remarks “Once the proud townhouses and residences of the wealthy, the decorated ceilings are now falling down.”
Many of the landlords of these Georgian buildings claim that the tenants themselves have deliberately damaged the properties in order to get them condemned and moved out to new corporation housing estates in the suburbs.

Go to: http://www.rte.ie/from-georgian-slums-to-the-suburbs-1964/

How Public Housing Transformed New York City 1935-67 ~ Part One.

Historian Joel Schwartz takes us on a guided tour of New York City before the NYC Housing Authority razed large swaths of run-down neighborhoods to build public housing projects. These arresting photographs of a long-vanished New York City owe their astonishing detail to the 4×5 inch negatives captured by the NYCHA photographers. Photos are from the NYC Housing Authority collection housed at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives.

Part Two: https://youtu.be/kJ62bxhj3iA

Mark Binelli ~ Meet Architect Bjarke Ingels, The Man Building The Future

The convoy of buses departed from the Palazzo on a cloudless spring morning, rolling onto a muted Las Vegas Strip and toward the Nevada desert. The buses carried a group of tech journalists, venture capitalists, curious engineers and startup-culture hype merchants – along with, not incidentally, one of the world’s most celebrated architects, Bjarke Ingels – passing sere mountain ranges and spiky yucca trees and a shimmering field of solar panels before finally arriving, after nearly an hour, at their destination: a compound of trailers and shipping containers surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Someone made a nuclear-test-site joke.

We’d come to witness the first-ever public demonstration of a new super-sonic transportation venture called Hyperloop One. Tech billionaire Elon Musk had roughed out the concept in 2013 and given his blessing to the founders, though he wasn’t directly involved himself. Essentially, the plan was for Hyperloop to revolutionize freight and passenger travel by shooting pods through pressurized tubes at speeds of more than 700 mph – faster than a commercial airplane! – using a zero-emission electric-propulsion system. This could mean half-hour trips from Los Angeles to the Bay Area.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/meet-architect-bjarke-ingels

Adele Peters ~ Meet The Man Building A Plastic Bottle Village In Panama

When Robert Bezeau moved from Montreal to Panama in 2009, one of the first things he noticed was the trash: the beaches surrounding the island where he lived were lined with plastic bottles. In a year and a half, working with volunteers, he estimates that he collected more than a million bottles for recycling.

Surrounded by piles of bottles, Bezeau started wondering if they could be used for something new—a building material for houses in what he calls the Plastic Bottle Village. In a new short documentary from Mel Films, filmmaker David Freid visits Panama to see one of the houses now under construction.

Read more: https://www.fastcoexist.com/meet-the-man-building