The pictures of the thirty-three Pruitt-Igoe buildings imploding during a planned demolition in 1972 have often been used to assert how government subsidies for the urban poor have failed.

NEWYORKER: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

He lucidly and tenaciously chronicles how government and business reinforced de-facto segregation and did nothing to stop the collapse of the metropolitan job base, and shows that, once Pruitt-Igoe was up and running, there was little public money available to maintain it.

NEWYORKER: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth