Word: co-ops
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...co-op's organizer--long-time Southern civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hamer--contacted a group of teaching fellows here last week and said that her Freedom Farms co-op needed $1300 to retain its option on the land in Sunflower County, Miss...
...United Housing obviously wanted to produce a city of thousands of inexpensive rooms, which it did very well. Each of the 15,372 apartments has hardwood floors, ample closet space, a large kitchen, central air conditioning. At $450 per room down and $25 per room in monthly maintenance charges, Co-Op City is an unbeatable bargain-at first glance...
...also shaping up as an eminently depressing place to live. Co-Op City is dense (200 people per acre). It is relentlessly ugly: its buildings are overbearing bullies of concrete and brick. Its layout is dreary and unimaginative. Right now, residents have to bus their kids to nearby schools and shop in a make-do supermarket on the bottom floor of a garage. Not a spadeful of dirt has yet been turned on a new subway line that will connect the project directly with New York City, of which it is supposed to be a vital part. Even worse, except...
...failure of Co-Op City does not stop with its debilitating environment. If the U.S. is going to meet the demand for housing without even more public aid, construction costs must come down. One promising way is to apply technical innovation, including large-scale prefabrication. But stiff municipal building codes and the power of the building trades' unions have blocked most such attempts, while construction costs spiral up, 12% a year...
...Co-Op City is so big that its sponsor was able to reduce some costs through bulk purchasing. The sponsor might have used the same muscle to force really significant changes in construction techniques. What labor union could resist bending its archaic rules in order to work on a fiveyear, $294 million job? What city has anything to lose by modernizing building codes in order to keep 15,000 middle-class families in town? At Co-Op City, the questions were not raised and the opportunities not seized. But its example remains for other projects to heed...