Brooklyn writers donate anthology proceeds to fight Ratner’s Atlantic Yards
Josh Guttman | January 8, 2008
Media Bistro broke the story today that the contributors to the anthology Brooklyn Was Mine (Brooklyn-based writers Jennifer Egan, Lara Vapnyar, Jonathan Lethem, Darcey Steinke, and Darin Strauss) plus fifteen others decided to donate all the book’s proceeds to the non-profit organization, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. Full disclosure: four of the writers are on the DDDB advisory board. This is a great gesture towards Brooklyn and one which I personally support. Opposition to Forest City Ratner’s proposed $4 billion Atlantic Yards development remains as strong as ever and even seems to be growing in recent months. These writers characterized the Atlantic Yards project as "overwhelmingly dense, grossly out-of-scale with its surrounding neighborhood," and disruptive to longstanding communities. The development is currently held up in court. Incidentally, DDDB published The Unity Plan for Vanderbilt Yards yesterday as an alternative to Atlantic Yards. The rendering looks nice and certainly, much more in scale with the surrounding area. What do you think about Atlantic Yards?
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