Architect of the Idiocracy

More Proof That Ratner is a dinosaur, and that Atlantic Yards embodies outdated thinking and runs counter to nearly every established urban planning principle today. We knowRatner has a penchant for choosing bad designs, and in an added twist, he's chosen fashionable-but-impractical Frank Gehry - one of the most environmentally unsound architects practicing today. From the inestimable DDDB:

Gehry Not Green
We were doing some Googling™ on Gehry and discovered how anti-green his buildings really are according to revered environmentalist Bill McKibben. Is this what we really need?: Lecture Notes: Bill McKibben on "Building Communities That Actually Work" at The Architectural League
Emily Gertz. April 24, 2006. World Changing.com

It was a perfect, mild spring day in New York City on Monday, April 17 -- the kind of day, said Bill McKibben from a podium at the New School's Tishman Auditorium, that "fools you into thinking that New York is the greatest place in the world." Despite the appreciative smatter of laughter, chances are most of those listening really did think of New York as at least one of the world's great built environments, as McKibben was there for the first of two architecture and environment lectures sponsored by The Architectural League New York: "Deep Sustainability: Building Communities that Actually Work."

Notions about what comprise systems that work is about to change, said McKibben. Peak oil is one reason: the end of cheap and easily obtained supplies of the fossil fuels that have powered industrial civilization for the past 200 years. McKibben predicted that one day, Frank Gehry "will be seen a world champion for how much energy can be concentrated into producing one building."...

We know that Gehry's buildings are impractical, often create environmental hazards, are not pedestrian friendly, (the area around his buildings becomes dead urban space), and now we can feel extra special, knowing that Gehry's designs will not only wreck our neighborhood, but contribute to wrecking the planet as well. Frank Gehry, Architect of the Idiocracy.