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March 3, 2007
What Would Jane Do?
New York Observer
To the editor:Matthew Schuerman and his subject, urban planner Laurie Olin, are apparently unconcerned with the major problem of the Atlantic Yards project, or of any development like it: control [“This Guy Wants You to Love Atlantic Yards,” Feb. 26]. The Atlantic Yards plan gives control over a vital swath of downtown Brooklyn to a single corporate “decider”: Forest City Ratner. Every decision—about the shape of an entire neighborhood, about which business can lease space, what tenants can do in their apartment buildings, or whether or not planned green space actually gets greened—will lie with this private group. It is a transfer and consolidation of civic control—over many, many city blocks—into the hands of a single private, profit-making organization.
What’s the most distinctive—or the most desirable, or hottest, or coolest—neighborhood in New York? Not any neighborhood managed by a corporation: not Battery Park City, not Rockefeller Center, not anything by Trump. Our favorite blocks, our favorite shops and our favorite restaurants will never be located in these places.
I suggest that Mr. Olin and Mr. Schuerman go get those Jane Jacobs books out of the trashcan. The neighborhoods she saved are the most expensive ones in the city. Right now, in 2007.
And for a reason: They have character. Meals, coffees and leases are transacted between relatively independent players, not between individuals and powerful corporations. Interesting things happen, and not by committee.
I can’t believe I have to read a reactionary corporate apologia in The Observer. Laurie Olin is the one who’s stuck in 60’s mode, and that mode is that of the megalomaniac, authoritarian planner.
Andrew Nimmo
Brooklyn
Posted by amy at March 3, 2007 8:49 AM