City of Brooklyn Case Study

Michael Davis
Brooklyn Case Study
It’s hard to take either side of a story that has direct impact on the displacement of a large population of people that are proud of where they live. The best way to address this situation is to break the sides of the decision up and discuss the benefits of both. A major corporation with all of the finances in line; only waiting on the approval of government to build and reconstruct downtown Brooklyn is one side; the other side being the citizens and various supporters of stopping the building and overall destruction of the neighborhood that many have called their home for years. Lastly I want to give my personal opinion of where the finances/subsidies should be concentrated to benefit both parties and still keep a since of accomplishment in improving a community that requires many updates with the changing times but still preserve the history and common interest of its community members which remains strong today.
Major development has been planned for the downtown Brooklyn area in New York to reconstruct the city’s infrastructure and install new housing developments, even some stories high across the river from Manhattan. There plans for new schools, police stations, and even a new sports arena as a new home for the New Jersey Nets professional basketball team. The corporation behind this development feels this project will provide new jobs, housing for the people, and bring money back into the struggling local neighborhoods of the downtown Brooklyn district. These are all things that the city of Brooklyn could use to secure a bright future and keep up with the technology of surrounding areas of New Jersey, Manhattan, and Long Island. The company feels that they have eminent domain in Brooklyn’s rundown sections and that gentrification is almost entirely necessary to stabilize the local economy and save citizens from becoming completely homeless.
With what seems to be a great idea, comes the issue of many negative impacts this construction project could have. According to the video, the corporation does not have the entire support of federal and local governments due to much petition and lobbying congress from the community and other anti-support groups. This disconnection raises questions if the corporation is going to be willing to compensate the citizens that are displaced due to construction. They say that the people will be allowed to live in the new housing units at the same price they were previously paying for rent, but where are they to go for temporary work or a place to live during the few year span that the project is estimated to take? With the building of new businesses, what will owners of local businesses already established do when they have to shut down for good? They don’t have resumes or background experience for new jobs that require a college education. They have been working this one place all their lives and more than likely took over operations from the family member before them that ran the shop. Many citizens see this project as a stripping from all of the culture of growing up and living in Brooklyn this past century.
Personally, I cannot agree with either side since I have never been to Brooklyn and can only draw conclusions from what I have watched from the video. I feel immersing myself into the environment currently in place and gaining a better understanding of the story would make it easier for me to make proper judgment. However I believe that remodeling of some areas is appropriate and quite possibly necessary. The developers should be allowed to build the new sports arena for the Nets to play in. The benefits would be great, including jobs easily accessible to the community, entertainment/source of revenue for a struggling region, and ethically it just makes sense to bring the idea “sport” back to Brooklyn. Sport in most cases always seems to build pride in a community and among fans and players alike. If they just construct one or two anchor assets in the city, then it would be a good founding to slowly build from that onto housing units and so on. People who have been living the same way for a hundred years don’t like change and I can respect that sentiment. Let’s not crush lives overnight with a two billion dollar sledge hammer but get back to the roots of a historically important town and bring positive improvements to a struggling urban America one small project at a time.