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February 24, 2007
A Developing Story
New York Times OpEd
Jennifer Egan
THE developer Bruce Ratner broke ground this week on his Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, despite an eminent domain suit over property he must raze to build a basketball arena for the Nets. This “preparatory work” is Mr. Ratner’s latest maneuver in a maddeningly effective campaign to make his instant city — a 22-acre swarm of 16 residential skyscrapers (and a 20,500-seat arena) that would create the densest population swath in the United States — look and feel like a foregone conclusion.
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By allying himself with groups run largely by African-Americans, [Ratner] was able to cast himself — a wealthy man who stands to make $1 billion on the Atlantic Yards development — as the champion of working-class Brooklynites who favor jobs and housing in a battle against affluent, spoil-sport newcomers who have the luxury of fretting over their quality of life. This was a powerful strategy: the question of whether the Atlantic Yards project was good for Brooklyn dissolved into the uneasy question of whose Brooklyn you were talking about.What was mostly lost in this caustic debate was the biggest question of all: what do we Brooklynites — a diverse and even divided collective — want our borough to be? Do we want it transformed from a sunny, low-lying place into knots of vertical superblocks? Are we content to let our borough’s future be imposed on us by developers and politicians?
Posted by amy at February 24, 2007 10:14 AM