[1] Edited by George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher, the book is a collection of photographs depicting life in New York City public housing projects.

The book explores reasons for the decline in public housing projects and suggests the stakes involved in restoring what was once a proud civic achievement.

Marcia Morales, Jared Wellington, Gertrude Livingston, and Aaliyah Colon are four resident photographers who provide their first-person accounts in the book.

Carrano had curated exhibits of war photojournalism and participatory photography that The New York Times termed "poignant"[9] and "required viewing.

On the book jacket is a tribute by John T. Hill,[1] a former director of graduate studies in photography at Yale University and the author of Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye, who likens Project Lives to the seminal work of Jacob Riis.

Because media coverage included extensive selections from the photography collection, the photos ended up being viewed many orders of magnitude more times than the number who read the book alone.

The New York Times noted that "Most New Yorkers know what public housing looks like from the outside, but a bracingly simple compilation of pictures takes us into the interiors of the buildings and thus into the residents' startlingly ordinary lives.

"[15] Noting the book's focus on Pruitt-Igoe, Politico Magazine advised that NYCHA's ability to make a comeback will have a crucial bearing on the shape of the country's future safety net.

[19] Slate's Behold blog summed up: "By presenting this look at life in the projects, people in New York and beyond will see why they are worth funding and call for action.

[13] National Public Radio's Leonard Lopate of WNYC interviewed Davis and photographers Wells and Mourning, calling the book fascinating.

[3] Only Brooklyn Magazine raised a hint of criticism within an otherwise exhaustive and positive piece by asking about the appropriateness of disposable single-use film cameras and by suggesting issues with advocacy art in general.

[30] The following year, Project Lives was a finalist in both the current events/social change and multicultural non-fiction categories at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

The book indicates that while the agency's centralized command and control practice was outdated, plans were afoot in 2014 by a new administration to devolve more power to local building management.

Project Lives also argues that, contrary to public outcry, the agency's delay in placing closed-circuit television cameras at Boulevard Houses did not set the stage for the notorious killing of a six-year-old resident in June 2014.

Finally, the book's outlook on Bill de Blasio is clearly favorable, crediting the mayor with proposing safety enhancement measures, relieving NYCHA from the burden of paying for its own police protection, and raising the issue of economic inequality.

[36] The city comptroller, whose harshly critical views of NYCHA are recorded in Project Lives, continued issuing negative audits of the agency.

Carrano said to the Long Island Press, "I would like to see the resident photographers who participated in this book have an opportunity to testify in Congress on hearings that focus on affordable housing.