Brutal Utopias

Around 1970, opposition from residents halted the construction of high-rise development in the Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood of Minneapolis at the midway point. They demonstrated, refused to pay rent and took lawsuits – which they won – because of the ‘ecological and social disadvantages of high-rise development’. The developers tried to turn the tide with peace signs on their artist’s impressions, but in the end the residents of Riverside themselves drew up, collectively, a renewal plan for the part of the neighbourhood that had not yet been demolished. A contagiously optimistic film about what a counterculture can achieve. With a surprising prelude about the residents of the flats. ‘The people united will never be defeated!’