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November 13, 2009
Atlantic Yards, the CBA, and "racialized discourse"
Atlantic Yards Report
So, Atlantic Yards has been analyzed through many lenses, but environmental justice is a new one. This spring, an article published in the Journal of Sport & Social Issues bore the title Sports and Environmental Justice: "Games" of Race, Place, Nostalgia, and Power in Neoliberal New York City and, while jargon-heavy, it offers some insights, notably that "the developer co-opted the racialized discourse of social movements for economic, environmental, and social justice."
The author is University of California Davis American Studies professor Julie Sze, a former Brooklynite and author of Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice. She relied significantly on AY critics such as Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), urban planning professor Tom Angotti, and the film Brooklyn Matters.
Sze's book concerns the impacts of polluting facilities and while an arena is not a waste transfer station, there are similarities in the development battles. The irony is that some of those who might be expected to resist the imposition on the community of an arena do not do so, because they have partnered with the developer or been co-opted.
Posted by eric at November 13, 2009 10:34 AM