As part of the Buell Center’s long-term initiative to cultivate a new national conversation about public housing in the United States, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis, Public Housing: A New Conversation seeks to restate the problem by reconsidering the facts: that public housing exists in the United States in a variety of forms, that more of it is needed in other forms, and that these needs are connected to those public needs addressed by recent investment in other types of infrastructure.

The pamphlet synthesizes Buell Center research and ideas generated in the Public Housing/Public Sphere: Policy and Design Workshop held in July 2009 at GSAPP’s Studio-X space in downtown Manhattan. Its content shares the vision and argument that genuinely public housing is needed, and that investment in housing and related infrastructures could serve as a catalyst of urban transformation in American cities and suburbs.