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October 23, 2008
Is Overdevelopment Still a Threat?
City Room [NY Times Blog]
Tom Angotti, who directs the Center for Community Planning and Development at Hunter College, has written a new book, “New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate,” to be released by the M.I.T. Press next month. As its title suggests, the book argues that powerful real estate interests have often effectively hijacked land-use decisions in the city, but the book also gives examples of local groups that have organized against environmental hazards, mega-projects, urban renewal and gentrification.
Of course, in just the last few months the fear of “overdevelopment” has been eclipsed, in some quarters perhaps, by fear that the real estate market will decline as a result of the financial and credit crises that have buffeted economies worldwide. Those concerns were the subject of a panel discussion tied to the book’s publication, on Monday evening at the Museum of the City of New York.
...Professor Angotti was particularly critical of the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. He said that the developer of the project, Forest City Ratner, “got the state to threaten condemnation of 22 acres in Brooklyn,” and that now “there’s no way they’re going to finance it and we’re looking at probably 20 years or more of parking lots.”
Posted by eric at October 23, 2008 2:04 PM