Robert Taylor Homes: Largest Public Housing Project Traps Black Chicago in Concentrated Poverty

Construction begins in 1955 on the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago's South Side — 28 high-rise buildings stretching two miles, housing 27,000 people in the world's largest public housing project. The Chicago Housing Authority, under pressure from white aldermen who block public housing in white neighborhoods, concentrates all projects in already Black areas. The result is a racially homogeneous 'second ghetto' of concentrated poverty with substandard maintenance, crime, and social isolation. The towers become symbols of deliberate segregation by public policy.