RaghavanRishabh VTP Annotation

The image, a newsletter from the 1950s, shows us the detail with which certain spaces propogated specific communities to invest in certain futures. Strinkingly, the newsletter ties up the quality of (social, public) housing with "WHO" lives in it, and there is little room for ambiguity in the depiction that accompanies the text: blond-headed white children. The community called to invest in making Manhattanville a "better place to live in" will first and foremost (as made clear by the size of the font) do so by "bet[ting]" on themselves, by embodying through their very "whiteness" a better[ment]".This image is a piece of ethnographic evidence in that it exposes what is actually contained in the idea of "better", "blight"-free housing infrastructure: the materiality of the derilict and blighted housing to be transformed, but also and more importantly still, the "undesired" inhabitants that beg for replacement.