Skip to main content

Architecture / Criticism > Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects

Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects: Adventures in Social Democracy in NYC and DC

By Owen Hatherley


Where to buy


Publish Date

June 11, 2024

Category

Architecture / History / Contemporary
Political Science / History & Theory

Price

$22.95
A walk through the remnants of a social democratic America, and an argument about its future.

Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects is an insightful exploration of the remnants of a social democratic America and a thought-provoking argument about its future.

The book traces the rise of a 1960s urban ideology that celebrated bottom-up, organic city development while criticising state-led planning that resulted in lifeless, sterile "projects." Using walking as a method, the author tests these ideas across New York City, with a brief interlude in Washington, DC, examining a wide array of urban developments.

Key areas explored:

- Cultural complexes in Manhattan
- New Deal-era public housing in Brooklyn, Harlem, and Queens
- Roosevelt Island’s social experiment
- Communist housing co-operatives in the Bronx
- Union-led rebuilding of the Lower East Side
- DC's Metro system

By walking through these spaces, the book reveals that, despite their flaws, fragments of a more equal society were built in the past and continue to thrive today.  Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects asks what lessons a new generation of American socialists might learn from these surviving social democratic enclaves as they envision a better future.
Owen Hatherley writes regularly on aesthetics and politics for, among others, the Architectural Review, the Calvert Journal, Dezeen, the Guardian, Jacobin, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of several books, including, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Artificial Islands: Adventures in the Dominions and Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer.

ISBN: 9781915672445
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: June 11, 2024