What metaphors are used in There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz?

The Chicago housing projects where Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers grow up and where their mother has lived since she was four years old. They are a metaphor for the struggle of poor American, often black, familied. The projects become a metaphor for the struggle to survive gun battles, gang influences, overzealous police officers, and overburdened and mismanaged bureaucracies to simply survive.