The Shape Of Things To Come?

Let's Hope!

Even if Ratner's crap project doesn't go through, future generations will look back at this age as one of greed; earlier generations invested in the future: planting trees and creating parks that future generations would enjoy.

The current crop of politicians, under the influence of voraciously greedy developers, has squandered and opportunity to make the Brooklyn renaissance - which was a true grass roots movement - flourish, rather they are doing everything in their power to displace the people that started it, and destroy the aesthetics of the Brooklyn that set the stage for it. In short, they are simply turning Brooklyn into a concrete and glass boxes with like anywhere else USA.

Anyway, here's a better design for Vanderbilt Yards. Feasible and liveable, two things Ratner's plan which is just a public subsidized land grab, is not.

The UNITY Plan: The Community's Plan for the Vanderbilt Yards

When Atlantic Yards finally goes away, the community is ready with the UNITY Plan. The website for the plan has just launched; there you can also download the pdf of the complete plan and view more plan models.

From the Unity Plan website:

UNITY'S Planning Principles:

• CONNECT Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and other neighborhoods


• Develop at a HUMAN SCALE and density


• Promote DIVERSITY AND VITALITY in urban design


• Create and preserve AFFORDABLE HOUSING


• REDUCE TRAFFIC, IMPROVE MASS TRANSIT


• Create JOBS for Brooklyn residents


• Create truly usable and accessible PUBLIC SPACES


• Guarantee an OPEN PLANNING PROCESS, with transparency and accountability

...
The UNITY plan offers 1500 units of housing distributed over 8 acres.

Units of housing currently on the market will remain and additional units can be made available through adaptive reuse.

60% of all units will be permanently affordable to Brooklyn residents and all will be built on site. This creates 900 affordable units compared to the 315 affordable units in phase one of the FCR plan.

To support the housing and create a vibrant community, this community based plan includes schools, senior services, child care, recreation as well as new retail space


While I can't imagine myself enjoying the sunshine on a small island park on the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic, its preferable to a glass and steel hand grendade.