On American Suburbia and Pruitt-Igoe

Television and the Politics of Care in American Postwar City

Abstract

This study aims at addressing the interplay between American Suburbia and Pruitt-Igoe-like projects through the lens of television representations while accessing their repercussions on city development regulations, Gender and Care. These concomitant urban models are two distinct examples of the American City, built from scratch at the height of Modernity and that concurs with the dissemination and banalization of Television.

Family values, domestic stereotypes, gender roles and segregation will be considered, while simultaneously, tackling the role of television in the implementation of media rhetoric that underlies the way these massive housing projects were designed, understood, and consequently, inhabited.

The suburbanization movement in postwar America symbolized the pursuit of the American Dream, emphasizing nuclear families, homeownership, and the construct of the suburban housewife. Concurrently, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, emerged as a symbol of failed urban planning projects whose consequences were to be predominantly faced by low-income., African-American residents. These contrasting narratives provide the backdrop for framing the politics of care and gender relations in a paradigm-shifting America.

While exploring housing policies, these two urban development models will be examined with a focus on the implementation of specific media narratives that shaped the social and cultural fabric of American postwar cities. At the same time, this discussion will be held from the vantage point of critical distance to review previous failures and understand that television can also be a common and legitimate platform to air counter-narratives that can build more balanced and inclusive urban models.