PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewIn an otherwise nuanced book, Austen labels the social workers and officials who vowed to clear slums and house the poor as 'do-gooders.' Implicit in his scorn is a hindsight appreciation that, for the poor to thrive, their communities must include working- and even middle-class families. The urbanist Jane Jacobs knew as much, but her The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published in 1961, after evictions of working-class public housing residents were already well underway. Until the sociologist William Julius Wilson published The Truly Disadvantaged, in 1987, few comprehended the terrible consequences of cleansing urban neighborhoods of the stably employed. In 2018, Ben Austen has illustrated these repercussions; we can now better consider remedies by contemplating the lessons High-Risers offers.
