lethem and atlantic yards

you gotta admit, the proposed building in the "after" picture at the bottom changes the whole landscape -- the whole nature of the landscape.

Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on your point of view. Novelist Jonathan Lethem thinks it's a bad thing, and says so in Slate, in an open letter to superstar architect Frank Gehry, who designed the project.

The facts seem to be that a sixteen tower building project designed by Gehry, which includes a new sports arena as well as shops and residences for all incomes, is being proposed by a single developer to help revitalize stagnant areas of Brooklyn. The building of the sports arena would require tearing down structures acquired through eminent domain. Area citizens, including Lethem, are angry about being shut out of the planning process.

The problem, according to Lethem, is manifold:

1. the scale of project: too large to fit in its residential neighborhood setting
2. Ratner's (the developer's) dishonesty in trying to foist the entire complex onto a community that simply believes they're getting a new arena
3. Ratner's track record in the area of ugly and failed developments
4. "divisive, zero-sum politics" characterizing those who question the project as obstructionist
5. eminent domain exercised to the benefit of a single private company
6. sentimental attachment to an existing high rise in Williamsburg that would be overshadowed by the new towers
7. just plain ugly designs (in Lethem's opinion)

I don't mean to be a breathless fan, but it's fun watching Lethem -- one of my favorite novelists and fast becoming a favorite essayist -- lose his cool a little on paper and become a middle-aged nimby. It happens to the best of us, I'm told. I had assumed from reading this that I would agree 100% with Lethem, given the fandom and my trust of his opinions and righteousness. But his patchily contained anger and some nasty paragraphs attacking Gehry's taste and ego (in one of these Lethem reminds Gehry that he's an architect, not an urban planner, forgetting of course that Lethem himself isn't an urban planner, either) detract from the power of his arguments.

Living in San Francisco for the past eight years, I've had way too close an acquaintance with both rampant, community-destroying development, and with knee-jerk, obstructionist nimbyism opposing aesthetically challenging and tradition-breaking projects that really would benefit the community. The arguments for each side are familiar; both sides always claim to promote the good, or defend the good, of the community. And unless you're on the spot, dialed in, and possess excellent research skills, it's sometimes impossible to figure out who's right.

Everything I've heard or read about Brooklyn or Williamsburg in the past years has indicated that the place is gentrifying at an unfunny rate, which means, of course, that the neighborhood's most economically challenged are, or will soon become, residentially challenged. There are a lot of good arguments here, but even ugly high-density, high rise, mixed income residences are better than a beautiful nothing.

So what's the truth? If this development is killed, what will take its place? Are there any citizens' groups with their own plans? Does anyone out there know more about this?

Via blog of a bookslut.