How could you have made High Density public housing WORK?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Hear the words "Housing Project" and typically we all imagine something similar...
You have a vision of massive, ugly, decaying buildings. Half abandoned and vacant, covered in trash and graffiti. Home largely to gangs and drug dealers. Promises of hope to lower income families become symbols of inefficiency, decay and above all, Failure.

That is the image many of us have come to learn, seeing it in popular media and the news.
The truth however as always is more complicated...

Often many such projects start off fulfilling their intended purpose, but fall victim to a history of neglect, cost cutting, and and built in self fulfilling nature of destruction.

The list of Massive failures is long and people point to them as "Proof" the Massive Density structures simply do not work.
But do they, or COULD they?

One of the earliest, and largest, urban housing developments is known as Queensbridge in Queens. Built in 1940 it gives room to some 3100 units over a total of 96 individual buildings. Queensbridge was one of the first big projects, and perhaps because of that, it is one of the most successful. It contains schools, libraries, day care, shopping centers and several parks and theaters.

Another notable housing project is the Soundview Houses in the Bronx.
Unlike Queensbridge, Soundview saw some of the worst crime and decay during the 70's and 80's. For years much of the area was abandoned and drug dealers ruled places largely unopposed by local police.

Perhaps the most well known Housing project is Pruitt Igoe and it is certainly the one most often pointed to as "Proof" of how such huge living spaces don't work... There are of course Countless other examples of housing projects both in MYC and nation wide.

But often there is a similar theme to these...
As the yard designed for "Low Income" people and families, from the start many of the projects are built "On the cheap". Huge constructions done with sub standard material that begins to decay after only a few years.
To compound this is that once completed, often there is very little "Upkeep" giving, many projects were finished, and forgot about, given only minimal federal funding for maintenance and security.
And of course the biggest doom to these is simply the lack of "care" Tenant borers and Home associations were often either toothless organizations, or woefully under staffed and undermanned for the task of monitoring such massive structures...

If left to me to "Do Over" I know of countless ways in which massive high density housing could be improved and done right.
But I am curious how others feel about it's history and future?

[energiewende]

Throw out all the actual poor people and replace them with children of upper middle classes who are unemployable because of their non-marketable skills.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Energy please don't turn this into another dog pile of your extreme out touch views...
There are grown ups here trying to have a real discussion

[energiewende]

How is that out of touch? It is an empirically observable process that has improved formerly impoverished areas of several major cities.

[Mr Bean]

Three things

1. You must plan ahead, where are the residents jobs? How far away is the administrative agencies such residents will need to access?
One of the many lessons of Pruitt Igoe is don't bulldoze a section of poor neighborhood where there are no jobs and move 1000 new people in. The other is don't build the housing out of walking distance of people who may or may not own cars or have a bank account.

2. Take a lesson from other countries high rises, give the first two levels over to businesses.
If the first two levels are a mall and the third level is offices, it's easy to fit floor 4/5/6 in there with decent apartments with ready made jobs below them.
This also takes care of the rent issue since the businesses will want ready employees and be willing to pay slightly more for rent/get a tax write off for agreeing to have a business there.

3. Be willing to kick people out
Someone shitting in the stairwell? They don't belong there as they can't deal with this kind of life, move them out
Getting complaints about all night blaring of music? Get the amateur dj out of the building.

[energiewende]

3. Be willing to kick people out
Someone shitting in the stairwell? They don't belong there as they can't deal with this kind of life, move them out
Getting complaints about all night blaring of music? Get the amateur dj out of the building.

So you just move the problem tenants to some other sink estate. That doesn't solve the problem.

[Purple]

3. Be willing to kick people out
Someone shitting in the stairwell? They don't belong there as they can't deal with this kind of life, move them out
Getting complaints about all night blaring of music? Get the amateur dj out of the building.

So you just move the problem tenants to some other sink estate. That doesn't solve the problem.

So just designate one central "sink estate" as you put it for those anarchist. I figure that spending a few months forced to live among others that shit under stairs and play loud music will make them much less inclined to act like that once they are released back into society. And if that fails, a few months in a minimum security prison can't hurt either.

[energiewende]

3. Be willing to kick people out
Someone shitting in the stairwell? They don't belong there as they can't deal with this kind of life, move them out
Getting complaints about all night blaring of music? Get the amateur dj out of the building.

So you just move the problem tenants to some other sink estate. That doesn't solve the problem.

So just designate one central "sink estate" as you put it for those anarchist. I figure that spending a few months forced to live among others that shit under stairs and play loud music will make them much less inclined to act like that once they are released back into society. And if that fails, a few months in a minimum security prison can't hurt either.

This sounds a lot like the actual situation in the USA. (though, usually not minimum)

[K. A. Pital]

Hey - I wonder why Chinese high-rises aren't covered in graffiti. Or even the low-rises either. Or why Singapore and Hong Kong still survive even though people are crammed in high-rises all over the place.

High density housing can work. People just need to stop behaving like assholes.

[Mr Bean]

So you just move the problem tenants to some other sink estate. That doesn't solve the problem.

So just designate one central "sink estate" as you put it for those anarchist. I figure that spending a few months forced to live among others that shit under stairs and play loud music will make them much less inclined to act like that once they are released back into society. And if that fails, a few months in a minimum security prison can't hurt either.

This sounds a lot like the actual situation in the USA. (though, usually not minimum)

This is what happens in the US, the problem is it takes forever to go from "Shitting on the steps" to "Digging ditches and making furniture in a minimum security facility"
But then it also takes forever to go from shitty housing to have stairs to shit on.

[Simon_Jester]

Stas, what do Asian societies do to ensure that people will not behave like assholes in their high-rises?

[spaceviking]

Stas, what do Asian societies do to ensure that people will not behave like assholes in their high-rises?

Probably a great many different things. In China I assume most people are in those high rises because they have factory jobs, if they were unemployed they would most likely be back in the countryside.

[Guardsman Bass]

As Bean pointed out, you want to build them in areas where there is already strong demand for housing, good access to transit networks, and plentiful jobs of any sort (they don't necessarily have to be high-paying jobs, as long as they can pay the rent). US housing projects tended to be located in inner cities that were already starting to experience job losses due to suburbanization, because the primary concerns were keeping the construction costs cheap, keeping poor black people away from white people, and not having the housing projects in any way be desirable compared to private sector housing (you can thank the real estate industry in the US for that one).

[PainRack]

I don't see that actually.

But Singapore is vastly different and Tampines, with its UN award for world habitat cannot be easily translated to other cities elsewhere in the world.


The thing is, housing estates need more than just houses. You need jobs, you need transportation, you need services. Then you need amnenities. The problem is that its easy to engineer the hardware, to create the parks, the roads, even route in some bus services and transportation, but the software of running the estate is too difficult and varied to compare things.


Energie may be crass, but his point about the populace is important. If said people living in the high rises are employed gainfully and in general becoming more prosperous, you remove a lot of the problems normally associated with public high rises such as crime and etc.

[PainRack]

Stas, what do Asian societies do to ensure that people will not behave like assholes in their high-rises?

The police.

I have no idea about China, but the use of the police to settle such disputes in Singapore and Hong Kong is common.
For example,
http://therealsingapore.com/content/res ... king-curry
I would normally hesitate to use TRS as a news source but its one of the more relevant google result on the first page. But essentially, there was a dispute between a PRC family and an Indian family over the smell of curry cooking. The police was brought in and referred to the community mediation centre, where the mediator arranged an arrangement between the two on how to proceed.
Note: While the arrangement was portrayed as a voluntary one, one honestly has to wonder how voluntary it might have appeared to the two families when the government had been involved.

There's also the law. You can find any Fine Singapore T-shirt, but the reasons why so many of those fines and penalties were put in place was to discourage such behaviour in the public.......... although I think a fine for not flushing would probably not be enactable in any other society:D


Similarly, both Hong Kong and Singapore had community centres/associations, where residents gathered and help resolve common disputes in their communities. No idea about Hong Kong, but an increasingly dense Singapore has meant such centres are becoming irrelevant as people become more insular but I can imagine how such centres, which promote activities for communal living could help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_A ... Singapore)

For example, the CC where I stay organised a New Year celebration and there's also some crazy stunts such as a Lamborghini charity ride a year back. They also form a convenient location to distribute aid, from tax services, education to employment aid(either via directions to the national work fair or a jobs wanted board).

The mediation centre was already mentioned above.

[PainRack]

Just as an example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenstown,_Singapore


The first major public housing estate in Singapore.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiong_Bahru

The first public housing.

Its easy to compare the two estates now. Queenstown is now more 'mature', the renewal projects gave it more lifts and the like, but changes in the entire city meant that it lost quite a lot of its allure, so, the sports stadium isn't useful now and its relatively more seedy due to the age and wealth of its residents. My of my early job attempts was to sell security systems to said residents, and the company targeted that area because the prospect of crime was viewed as higher there, even though the residents were poorer.

Its also easy to see where it has become more run down.
http://www.uebersee.com.sg/2009/06/15/p ... singapore/
This place used to be a haunt of my teenage years. Food, billards, even a cinema.
So, even in the more 'poorer' areas, there used to be tons of services. The run down of such areas is due however to other areas opening up with more shopping. I have no idea where people would go to play pool now but the draw is towards Tiong Bahru and other estates, afterall, its just 5 fucking kilometers away.

And of course, urban renewal, which is slow.
http://myqueenstown.blogspot.sg/2011/03 ... odbye.html



Tiong Bahru on the other hand, even though its older, is much more vibrant. The shopping mall is more quiet now due to competition, but the estate is just more lively with more shops and it still has a cinema.


And of course, UN world habitat award winner, Tampines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampines

http://www.safra.sg/~/media/Images/Abou ... anner.ashx
This part is one of the older aspects of Singapore.

This also shows the contrast.
http://myqueenstown.blogspot.sg/2010/07 ... erted.html
One of the reasons why Tampines and Pasir Ris gets more attention is also because of the relative wealth of its residents. That and of course, Tampines is the pet project of Mah Bow Tan, former HDB minister. So, politics means they get a lot of cash at urban renewal, even when they don't really need it.


And again, a lot of this isn't transplantable. I recently had this talk with a Bavarian tourist who was astonished at the sheer number of shopping malls. Each estate has in its centre a shopping mall, with the subsidiary estate having its own central shopping zone(or more) . The sheer amount of planning involved is insane and includes details such as flooding measures, which itself is tied to the national/citywide agency.

[Zaune]

The way I'd go about discouraging vandalism would be to get local residents involved in the maintenance process. Anyone living on the estate could earn a 5% rent discount if they signed up for the cleaning and litter-picking rota, or 15% if they had a relevant skill like painting or carpentry so they could be called on for more extensive repairs. It's a lot less tempting to kick over the bins or carve your initials into the bannisters if you know it's you or your dad or the bloke next door who'll be giving up his free time to sort out the mess, you know?

Oh, and the other thing that gets forgotten easily: Communal areas, and things for people to do. A nice big patch of grass where the kids can kick a ball around, some sort of shared indoor space that can be booked for coffee mornings or birthday parties, maybe a little sports centre or a cafe if the estate's on the edge of town.

[madd0ct0r]

limiting the number of poor people is important

SOP now in the UK is for mixed development - the developer can build a big set of flats, sell most of them to middle class, sell a bunch of penthouses to bankers or similar, and a few dozen flats are allocated to social housing.

The money in the building around them protects the poorer families from being forgotten. If the lift breaks, some white collar worker has the confidence to ring up the landlord or council and tell them to get it sorted, quickly. If there's communal spaces, enough house proud people with disposable income can afford to stick some plants in, or sprice up the paint if they think it's needed. We're not talking major things here, just enough money and time to lubricate the building, slowing attritional decay.

Another factor that's helped Mixed developement - the old method - take an existing slum area, knock it down and build a new tower block. The problem is, everyone there needs to move somewhere else for a year whilst it being built, so the people who moved back in aren't the origionals. Genrelaly speaking, it'd be the people at the top of the housing list, who need it urgently. BUT they get to the top of the housing list for factors that make them vulnerable. A tower block full of vulnerable people isn't as socially robust as a tower block with a normal pop cross section, and once the decay spiral starts, only the poor and desperate will be willing to move in. nasty feedback system that one.

Finally there's basic design has improved a lot. The big tower in open green space must have seemed like a good idea after the terrace slums, but in reality those big open spaces with things rising around you is very intimidating. Long curvy streets of buildings is like being in a nest - it's comforting and reassuring. It's a design paradigm that's coming back in.

Finally, one glaring difference between the american projects and the UK council estates: the latter was replacement for victorian terrace housing - mostly driven by german helped airborne demolition The former was a 'reward' for returing black soldiers, unlike the white ones who got the right to buy in the suburbs.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's not so much the poor people as the fact that they can't pay a lot in terms of rent and fees, so it's harder for building management to pay for the type of maintenance and security that would keep the building in top order short of the residents doing it themselves. Seeing as how they tend to be more cost-sensitive about housing expenses, they may be willing to tolerate higher-levels of run-down-ness anyways if it means cheaper rent. Lots of urban Americans in the late 19th century/early 20th century lived in shitty tenements and flophouses*, sometimes with multiple families present.

* You didn't see anything like Brazil's favelas or other third-world shantytowns. Maybe it's because cars were either non-existent or in their infancy, so you had to have concentrated dwelling - tenements instead of shacks.

I'm not saying you should let that be. It's a reason for mandatory minimum upkeep codes and subsidies for maintenance and construction expenses.

The former was a 'reward' for returing black soldiers, unlike the white ones who got the right to buy in the suburbs.

Public Housing predated World War 2, although the fact that it was going to be heavily used by poor urban black people was definitely a major influence on where and how it was constructed, as well as the paucity of funds made available for operations and maintenance after construction. You also have the real estate business fighting tooth and nail to make sure that none of this housing was even close to being good enough in quality to draw people away from private housing, and to avoid any public housing that might integrate with privately owned housing in existing and new neighborhoods.

[K. A. Pital]

Being poor doesn't really mean people would vandalize their own housing or public infrastructure, too. It certainly happens in the West, but most of the world is poorer than the West and vandalism of multi-unit housing complexes or, say, Metro stations is not nearly as widespread as in the West. Don't know why exactly, but it just seems that way.

[Sir Sirius]

Being poor doesn't really mean people would vandalize their own housing or public infrastructure, too. It certainly happens in the West, but most of the world is poorer than the West and vandalism of multi-unit housing complexes or, say, Metro stations is not nearly as widespread as in the West. Don't know why exactly, but it just seems that way.

"A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls."
-- KARL MARX, Wage Labour and Capital

The poor in the west, while not nearly as poor as the poor in the third world, are reminded of what they lack rather more frequently.

[Simon_Jester]

Sirius, I don't think that explains it. That would explain why the poor in their huts would sabotage the palaces of the rich, but it does not explain why they sabotage their own homes, or do this preferentially to sabotaging someone else's palace.

I have a different theory, more below.

It's not so much the poor people as the fact that they can't pay a lot in terms of rent and fees, so it's harder for building management to pay for the type of maintenance and security that would keep the building in top order short of the residents doing it themselves. Seeing as how they tend to be more cost-sensitive about housing expenses, they may be willing to tolerate higher-levels of run-down-ness anyways if it means cheaper rent. Lots of urban Americans in the late 19th century/early 20th century lived in shitty tenements and flophouses*, sometimes with multiple families present.

* You didn't see anything like Brazil's favelas or other third-world shantytowns. Maybe it's because cars were either non-existent or in their infancy, so you had to have concentrated dwelling - tenements instead of shacks.

I wouldn't think the average guy living in a shack would have a car with which to travel any real distance.

I think part of it is that the urban areas of the 19th and early 20th centuries were smaller, physically, there were less people working for smaller businesses. If 10% of your population lives in totally miserable slums and flophouses back then, for a typical city that might be a few thousands, or tens of thousands of people. Now for a major city in Brazil it's hundreds of thousands.

When you have ten thousand people living under poor conditions, they all fit within a few neighborhoods, often 'cast-off' housing that used to be occupied by someone else but is now being rented out room by room to a poorer demographic. When you have two hundred thousand people living under poor conditions, they necessarily spread out over a lot more land. So you get much more visible favelas.

Also, the US during the period you name was growing pretty fast, and economic growth was outpacing population growth pretty sharply. A lot of the people who would become multigenerational favela occupants in modern Brazil, would instead keep moving around until they found a farm to settle on or a place growing fast enough to support a serious business and better housing for them in 1900-era America. Plus, any existing slums and shantytowns were quite likely to get torn down to make room for further construction, so they wouldn't become as institutional as they are in some Third World countries today.

Being poor doesn't really mean people would vandalize their own housing or public infrastructure, too. It certainly happens in the West, but most of the world is poorer than the West and vandalism of multi-unit housing complexes or, say, Metro stations is not nearly as widespread as in the West. Don't know why exactly, but it just seems that way.

My theory:

There's a certain fixed percentage of the population that is highly dysfunctional and will 'shit where they eat' in that they damage and prey upon their own living spaces and infrastructure. This percentage has little or nothing to do with any other economic factor, it's just that, say, 5% of all humans are crazy and dysfunctional and have no sense of community.

In the developed world, where the poor make up a minority of the population, these 5% of dysfunctional humans are overrepresented. Being poor doesn't mean you're a vandal. But being the sort of person who routinely vandalizes property means you are likely to become poor, or stay poor, because it correlates with being dysfunctional.

Now let's make up some numbers for the sake of having an example.

So if, say, 15% of the population is poor enough to need public housing in a First World Country, if 5% of the population is dysfunctional, and if virtually all dysfunctional people become or remain poor, then if you build housing for poor people, one in every three tenants will be a thug, vandal, addict, or lunatic. Not good. This means that housing in the poor areas will suffer a LOT of vandalism, and the only thing you can really do is try to screen out the (numerous) thugs, vandals, addicts, and lunatics.

Your success rate will be finite, and over the long haul the poor community experiences a massive amount of vandalism compared to a richer one. And it is less equipped to repair the vandalism, so the damage becomes permanent.

...

By contrast, in a Third World country where, say, 75% of the population lives in housing no better than the First World's public housing, the population of vandals, thugs, and freaks is still only 5% of the total. Now, instead of having one in three people be a vandal, it's one in fifteen. Which means that the community can police its own ranks, punish or ostracize vandals, and that the overall rate of vandalism declines to something that can hopefully be kept under control by maintainence even in a poor environment.

It also helps if the housing is under strong social controls that penalize people for acting like thugs, vandals, or freaks. Singapore does this, based on the descriptions I'm seeing. I imagine that, say, housing blocks in the Soviet Union had this too- I can't imagine them being ineffectively policed to the extent that public housing in parts of the West is (and was at that time). You, Stas, would know more of that than I.

[Guardsman Bass]

I wouldn't think the average guy living in a shack would have a car with which to travel any real distance.

I'm not talking about personal car ownership, as opposed to taxis, buses, and motorcycle taxis (licensed and unlicensed). There are lots of those in third world countries.

I think part of it is that the urban areas of the 19th and early 20th centuries were smaller, physically, there were less people working for smaller businesses. If 10% of your population lives in totally miserable slums and flophouses back then, for a typical city that might be a few thousands, or tens of thousands of people. Now for a major city in Brazil it's hundreds of thousands.

When you have ten thousand people living under poor conditions, they all fit within a few neighborhoods, often 'cast-off' housing that used to be occupied by someone else but is now being rented out room by room to a poorer demographic. When you have two hundred thousand people living under poor conditions, they necessarily spread out over a lot more land. So you get much more visible favelas.

I don't think the cast-off housing explanation really works, even when you factor in the stories of multiple families living in a single apartment. New York City's population, for example, completely exploded in the late 19th/early 20th century - it was growing by close to a million people a decade between 1890 and 1930. Most of those would have been poor, especially immigrants. Even if you figure that they were living two to an apartment for most of that time, you need hundreds of thousands of new apartments even inside of a single decade during that era.

It makes more sense to me that they crowded into denser neighborhoods because it was the only way to get around to their work in the absence of personal vehicles or motorized transit aside from inside-city rail.

Also, the US during the period you name was growing pretty fast, and economic growth was outpacing population growth pretty sharply. A lot of the people who would become multigenerational favela occupants in modern Brazil, would instead keep moving around until they found a farm to settle on or a place growing fast enough to support a serious business and better housing for them in 1900-era America. Plus, any existing slums and shantytowns were quite likely to get torn down to make room for further construction, so they wouldn't become as institutional as they are in some Third World countries today.

Here's the estimated growth rates of the US between 1870 and onward, according to Angus Maddison's data set. It's pretty mediocre until the 1890s (less than 2% a year on average), at which point you better growth - albeit not much better on average because the volatility of the economy. Meanwhile, the US population was growing at close to 5% a year when you average its population growth out over the period.

Brazil's probably better off in that regard. Its population growth was only 3% back in the 1960s, and it has gone down since then. Its growth rate has been volatile (like the turn of the century US), but still mostly over 5% since the 1960s. But I'm not sure whether that's real GDP growth, so it may have been lower.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I have always maintained that the ket to a "Stable" Population center is mixed housing.

"IMHO" the main reasons why Housing projects fail, is that they are JUST 'housing'.
Having a construction where people don't just "go home" but can go to "Live" is the key.
Buildings that have "Shops" on the first floor "Office" space on the second and third, and then living spaces from their up allows people to find jobs very close to where they live. So people with little income, who can't afford a car, can find a job within walking distance.
Also adding shops and business within the grounds of a"project" offers a further incentive for people to take pride in their surroundings and protect it.
Another key aspect is including truly comprehensive programs and facilities, making a project a True City within a city...
You need not just shops and business, but...
A dedicated police station for the project.
A dedicated medical and dental clinic for the project.
A dedicated firefighting force.
Schools, Libraries and day care.
Grocery and food stores.
And one of the most key aspects, having a transportation hub link to the project, so it can be directly linked to a larger mass transit system.

For those interested, I invite all to read up on Pablo Soleri and his theories and works concerning Acology

[Simon_Jester]

I wouldn't think the average guy living in a shack would have a car with which to travel any real distance.

I'm not talking about personal car ownership, as opposed to taxis, buses, and motorcycle taxis (licensed and unlicensed). There are lots of those in third world countries.

Ah. I see.

I think part of it is that the urban areas of the 19th and early 20th centuries were smaller, physically, there were less people working for smaller businesses. If 10% of your population lives in totally miserable slums and flophouses back then, for a typical city that might be a few thousands, or tens of thousands of people. Now for a major city in Brazil it's hundreds of thousands.

When you have ten thousand people living under poor conditions, they all fit within a few neighborhoods, often 'cast-off' housing that used to be occupied by someone else but is now being rented out room by room to a poorer demographic. When you have two hundred thousand people living under poor conditions, they necessarily spread out over a lot more land. So you get much more visible favelas.

I don't think the cast-off housing explanation really works, even when you factor in the stories of multiple families living in a single apartment. New York City's population, for example, completely exploded in the late 19th/early 20th century - it was growing by close to a million people a decade between 1890 and 1930. Most of those would have been poor, especially immigrants.

Even if you figure that they were living two to an apartment for most of that time, you need hundreds of thousands of new apartments even inside of a single decade during that era. It makes more sense to me that they crowded into denser neighborhoods because it was the only way to get around to their work in the absence of personal vehicles or motorized transit aside from inside-city rail.

You are in all probability right, though New York is also a very good example of a city that is, well, compact: the core of the city is Manhattan island and the areas immediately around it, and if you start sprawling outward from there with shantytowns, at some point it will make more sense for the people living in the shantytowns to just go away and move somewhere else.

Also, the US during the period you name was growing pretty fast, and economic growth was outpacing population growth pretty sharply. A lot of the people who would become multigenerational favela occupants in modern Brazil, would instead keep moving around until they found a farm to settle on or a place growing fast enough to support a serious business and better housing for them in 1900-era America. Plus, any existing slums and shantytowns were quite likely to get torn down to make room for further construction, so they wouldn't become as institutional as they are in some Third World countries today.

Here's the estimated growth rates of the US between 1870 and onward, according to Angus Maddison's data set. It's pretty mediocre until the 1890s (less than 2% a year on average), at which point you better growth - albeit not much better on average because the volatility of the economy. Meanwhile, the US population was growing at close to 5% a year when you average its population growth out over the period.

Hm. That contradicts my impression, not saying it's wrong... I'm sincerely confused by that because this is the period during which the US became a major industrial power, so I'm honestly not sure how that even happens without drastic economic growth.