[readthenotes1]

There is a fairly famous story in management of a guy in the 1960s who fought against building housing projects for the poor by tearing down neighborhoods and building big high rises.

The idea was to give more people a better place to live.

What the opponent said was you're going to concentrate a bunch of poor people in a building that neither we nor they will maintain, it will be far away from any jobs, and it will lead to more crime and more poverty.

I don't think it takes much to say that people are short-sighted and some are only interested in their own personal short-term gain, certainly no metaphor or analogy is needed to state the obvious.

[zamfi]

This is a very interesting story, but I feel like I'm missing something -- any chance you could dig up a reference to this for us?

Housing projects and private high rises seem like they would have similar problems...I'm not finding this easily, but confess I have no academic background in management!

[readthenotes1]

It was, if I recall correctly, discussed in the book called _The Fifth Discipline_ by Senge.

The entire book is about systems and how we typically ignore them to our disadvantage.

There is some overlap between this and Weinberg's Quality books.

And, of course, _Systematics_ explains it all clearly.

[AlbertCory]

> any chance you could dig up a reference to this for us?

you could search for Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago (torn down) or Pruitt-Igoe towers in St. Louis (torn down), for starters. Or the Cabrini–Green Homes in Chicago.

[zamfi]

Ah, thanks, yes I'm familiar with the legacies of torn-down public housing projects.

It was the private ones and the implied comparison that I was after -- but now that I'm re-reading the parent post maybe there was no comparison, just a long sentence describing public housing projects as torn-down neighborhoods with high-rises...