CHICAGO — It was born in hope, the houses and high rises that rose not far from where I grew up. Representing at first a bold urban dream, soon enough it became a nightmare and it was called Cabrini-Green.

It’s almost gone now, erased but for a few small buildings with a few residents, the tens of thousands of others scattered across the city and suburbs.

But they remain in the collective memory of the city. Some of us are old enough to vividly remember the complex, those 70 acres roughly bordered by Halsted Street on the west, Orleans Street on the east, North Avenue on the north, and Chicago Avenue to the south.

There were larger housing projects, more dangerous ones, too, but sitting as it did so close to the Loop and the prosperous neighborhoods of Old Town and the Gold Coast, Cabrini-Green got the most attention and fostered the most fear.

Its story is a complicated one, but it is powerfully told across the eight episodes and 3 hours and 32 minutes of a new podcast, “The Last Days of Cabrini-Green,” which began earlier this month, produced by Audible, Campside Media and At Will Media. (At Will Media also produced the Tribune docuseries “The Tylenol Murders.”).

Enlightening, informative and dramatically compelling, the series mixes deeply researched nonfiction with scripted dramatizations, old audio clips and appropriate music. It is directed by Theresa Buchheister.

Most podcasts I have listened to seem to me to consist of people enjoying the sounds of their own voices. Others aspire to more, and this one flat-out soars. It owes its existence to Chicago writer Ben Austen. A native South Sider, he knows this territory as well as anyone. His 2018 book, “High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing,” is brilliant, humane and essential for understanding this city. Or, as David Simon, former newspaperman and creator of “The Wire,” put it, “not merely the definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project, but a clear-eyed assessment of what happened to public housing as a national ideal and why it happened.”

Austen’s book provides the foundation and the fuel here. And its main voice too, as Austen provides narration that is precise, unembellished and calm. The series benefits also from dramatic segments by playwright Harrison David Rivers and delivered by such talents as Patina Miller of “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” Corey Stoll from “Billions,” and Harry Lennix, the native Chicagoan and star of such shows as “The Blacklist,” and currently involved with building a performing arts center in Bronzeville.

The series starts with the death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis. Walking with his mother Annette from their apartment building to his nearby school, he was shot and killed by a rifle shot from a high-rise window.

The date was Oct. 13, 1992, and by then Cabrini had devolved into a milieu of madness. Gangs prowled and drug dealing and gunfire were as conspicuous as cracked sidewalks.

This personal mother-and-son tragedy proves an effective means of taking listeners back into the history of public housing. Some optimists and politicians would tell you it was initially meant to ease the city’s housing shortage and was not intended to provide permanent homes but rather way-stations for people on their American dream train. Realists saw it as a new way to continue to segregate Black people.

We meet many of the players in this drama. There are heroes in such people as Eric Davis, who grew up in Cabrini and would be a police officer there, and Marion Stamps, resident and activist who organized strikes and protests against the area’s inequities from the 1960s until her death in 1996.

There are plenty of villains in the form of such people as former Mayor Richard M. Daley, especially in an awkward interview with Austen (“One of the weirdest interviews ever,” Austen says); former Mayor Jane Byrne, who moved into the complex for a three-week long public relations stunt; and, quite memorably, the all-but-forgotten Vince Lane, a devilishly fascinating guy who ran the Chicago Housing Authority from 1988 to 1995 and whose character was captured — “visionary and fraud” — in a 2001 Tribune headline when he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for lying to banks to obtain more than $2.5 million in loans for his private development work.

There are some chilling conversations between Austen and Anthony Garrett, serving a 100-year prison sentence for Danny’s murder. He confessed but has long claimed that he was coerced as he continues to say he was “a convenient fall guy.”

The little boy’s death would spark a political and societal crisis that would quickly lead to a gang truce and intensified media attention, but eventually came the demolition of the neighborhood after broken promises to its residents.

Seen the area recently?

Look at the handsome condos, snazzy townhomes, parks, baseball fields and thriving businesses. The echoes of Cabrini-Green get fainter every day, but the podcast brings them back. And it may compel you to further exploration and toward that end think about reading Austen’s “High-Risers,” or watch a couple of fine films, “70 Acres in Chicago,” a powerful documentary filmed over two decades, or “Voices of Cabrini: Remaking Chicago’s Public Housing;” listen to the local talent Bradley Parker-Sparrow’s “The Last Cabrini,” with narration by me, or songs by Cabrini-Green resident Curtis Mayfield, “Keep on Pushing” and “People Get Ready” will do.

Or just replay the end of this podcast. There you hear the haunting voice of Annette, emotionally resonant throughout the series, talking about her life since the death of her son that made her “dead inside.” But after years of troubles, she has proven more than resilient and now works to stop violence. She also returns “every once in a while” to what was once Cabrini-Green so that she will “never forget where I come from.” You will also hear the voice of her little boy, so long gone.

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(Rick Kogan is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.)

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