Yup, it is indeed featured in
Koyaanisqatsi. There is a long piece, singing of
desolation and the
wind, which is accompanied by visuals of a helicopter
fly-by of the abandoned
Pruitt-Igoe development. You can see through the floors of the buildings as the windows are all gone, and some walls as well. The
tenements march off into the distance
same, same, same;
an enormous piece of the earth reduced to
nowt more than a
Pareto-optimal rain
shelter for abused humans.
The piece accelerates suddenly, and the buildings are dynamited, collapsing in on themselves.
Urban blight made urban revitalization made music made art made explosion made dust cloud made-
and then there is nothing
Useless factoid: the architect of Pruitt-Igoe, Minoru Yamasaki, also designed the currently-in-dispute-over-rebuilding World Trade Center in New York City. The dynamiting of the housing development, which attracted cheering crowds as the edifices crumbled, is testament to the lack of design sensibility which brought low the ambition of the Twin Towers long before Al-Qaeda was even conceived. The complaints of shoddy design, workmanship and engineering that produced the spectacular remodeling-through-high-explosive of the Pruitt-Igoe development was apparent to anyone who had ventured outside the decorated corporate office spaces of Nos. 1 and 2 WTC; graffiti, dysfunctional systems, degrading surfaces and the like were merely the most visible of reasons to dislike the buildings. Those knowledgeable and/or opinionated about architecture could (and did) make much more structural complaints.