Atlantic Yards, Baghdad.

Perhaps our so called elite realize they are so increasingly out of touch with 'the people' that the new architecture- knowingly agoraphobic and standoffish - is an attempt to grab as much as possible, and have a quick way to close the gates before all hell breaks loose. That is certainly the mentality of Bruce Ratner in Brooklyn - consistently he does as much as he can to carve out a chunk of territory and make sure there's no public access...and it seems with our embassy in Baghdad- what kind of country has to build an embassy like this...as a Guardian Blog writes:
Diplomacy has no place in this monstrous bunker

We know that's case in for this monstrous bunker too:



Pat B. makes the point:

There they built the great castle that was overrun by Saladin in 1187, but retaken by Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1191. Acre became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the stronghold of the Crusader state, which fell to the Mameluks in a bloody siege in 1291. The Christians left behind were massacred.
The ruins of Acre are now a tourist attraction.
Any who have visited this last outpost of Christendom in the Holy Land before Gen. Allenby marched into Jerusalem in 1917 cannot – on reading of the massive U.S. embassy rising in Baghdad – but think of Acre


And I might add that the usual swan song of big corporations and empires is a monstrous, impractical out of scale building (Versailles, sears tower).

If AY means the the end of Bruce Ratner and forest city perhaps its not such a bad sign.