I was there when it still existed. I'm also the author of the piece.

We're not trying to make you feel bad that the projects were shut down. We are trying to convey:

* The scale of the process (the equivalent of relocating my entire hometown over the course of a decade). * Some of what was gained and what was lost for residents * The housing authority's demonstrated inability to meet their projections or deliver what they told residents they would. * The story of the photographer, who responded to an act of violence by trying to understand where that violence might come from, and in the process documented a historic moment in American urban life.

Like I said, I worked there and I'm not nostalgic about it. I saw some truly awful stuff. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a huge social and personal cost to residents in dismantling that system. If that cost had been honestly reckoned with during the Plan For Transformation, some of the more egregious problems could have been avoided.

The impression I got from the article was simply a sense of wistful remembrance, not that the buildings should not have been torn down. "This was here once. Now, it is gone. This is what I remember."