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Published on 7/23/08
Published on 7/23/08
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While new towers are regularly raised across Manhattan with little comment, changes afoot in Brooklyn have sparked fighting of an intensity rarely seen since the Battle of Long Island was waged on this turf in 1776. The Atlantic Yards complex, designed by Frank Gehry for builder Bruce Ratner, is simply the most conspicuous front in what some see as an all-out war for the soul of the borough. Gentrification per se isn’t always the issue; the argument centers often on the appropriate scale for Brooklyn. Is it big-box discounters and midtown-sized skyscrapers, or mom-and-pop stores and low-rises yielding unimpeded views?
“Brooklyn is no longer a secret,” says author and born Brooklynite Phillip Lopate. “So what does that mean? In terms of the incredibly hot real-estate market, it means that anything within a half-hour commute of Manhattan is Manhattan.” As Lopate has written, Brooklyn’s independent existence before it merged with the four other boroughs to create New York City in 1898 has instilled in Brooklynites a “lost” memory of greater glories. The self-regard heightened as the manufacturing base grew in the period leading up to World War II and then just as precipitously started to disappear—paralleled by a shift in population from largely white and lower middle-class to mostly Hispanic, black and poor. The era produced two of the most cherished Brooklyn myths: that it’s a paradise of salt-of-the earth-stoicism and that it’s a multicultural oasis, however imperfect.
Now the reality of development is colliding with the legend of Brooklyn as being “obstinately provincial, in the best sense,” as Lopate puts it. “That is the self-image Brooklyn has put forward, and it is the one the world has accepted.” The question now is, will that image soon be nothing more than another memory?—Howard Halle
Read up on these Brooklyn battles:
