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April 29, 2009
In discussion about Fort Greene and Clinton Hall, history, transition, gentrification, and, yes, Atlantic Yards
Atlantic Yards Report
It’s hard to do justice to the sometimes compelling, sometimes disjointed, wide-ranging panel discussion concerning Fort Greene and Clinton Hilll presented last night by the New York Times’s blog The Local at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Dweck Center at Grand Army Plaza.
But the session, titled “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” did touch on the important and sometimes fraught intersections of neighborhood transition, development pressure, and race/class relations. (Of the panelists, two were black and two were white.)
And, despite some overlong monologues (from both panel and audience) or off-topic questions, it left people longing for more, for the messy humanity of in-person dialogue, in contrast with often-anonymous online interaction.
...The growth of new residential towers, mainly at the neighborhood’s edges--and in several cases the unexpected consequence of a Downtown Brooklyn rezoning aimed to produce new (but ultimately unnecessary) office space, provoked dismay from [Nelson] George, who linked them to the planned Atlantic Yards project, which would be built just across the border in Prospect Heights.
Posted by eric at April 29, 2009 9:17 AM