Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood may soon get a major development, “Atlantic Yards”, replete with Frank Gehry-designed stadium. But how major is it, exactly? That’s what Keegan wonders over at Invisible Man:
As a resident who will directly feel the impact of the development surrounding my home, I haven’t felt that I have seen an accurate portrayal of the sheer scale of this project, in the context of the existing neighborhood. Enter Google Earth.
He uses the developer’s own plans and stated heights to make the buildings available in Google Earth, so that they can viewed surrounded by Google Earth’s default existing buildings. And the proposed buildings do indeed look huge.
You’d imagine that developers themselves might want to release well-crafted KML models of their proposed developments, in order to drum up buzz and prestige. Unless, of course, the likely impression is that they’re overbearing.
Steven Johnson says that it’s all about what angle you look at it from:
Continuity and discontinuity, issues raised by Johnson, are also defined by zoning, and there’s been no rezoning for the Atlantic Yards project, because, as a state project, it bypasses city oversight. The project seems to extend the concept of Downtown Brooklyn way beyond its traditional boundaries. See http://timesratnerreport.blogspot.com/2006/02/too-tall-and-too-dense-atlantic-yards.html
hull docks