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September 14, 2007
DOT hires Jan Gehl to evaluate streets; urbanist critiqued Ratner's Brooklyn
Atlantic Yards Reports reports on StreetsBlog's report that:
the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) has hired the firm of Danish urbanist Jan Gehl to evaluate city streets and other public spaces in "Major pedestrian and commercial corridors in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan."
Gehl himself famously walked around Downtown Brooklyn on a cold morning in November 2005, expressing dismay at the sterility of Forest City Ratner's MetroTech and skepticism about the developer's plans for Atlantic Yards.
Ezra Goldstein of the Park Slope Civic Council's Civic News did a good job of capturing Gehl's take, in an article headlined Plan for Life. The Gehl formula quoted differs from the sequence behind Atlantic Yards:
Instead of planning large buildings and then working down, he said, “you look first at the space you want to develop and ask what kind of life can be envisaged there. Then you ask what kind of public space will create that life. And only then do you design the buildings that create the public space you want.
NoLandGrab: Gehl describes a process where the proverbial cart is hitched behind the horse.
Meanwhile back in Gotham, NYC is tilting toward one direction, while Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards seeks to manifest mistakes of the past. However, since the 22-acre Atlantic Yards is the largest single-source private development project in NYC history, and proposes to be the most dense residential community in the nation, surely, if the project is allowed to procede, it will tip the balance.
Posted by lumi at September 14, 2007 5:56 AM