Does this matter? Really, not at all. It’s the winning submission for the Reinventing Grand Army Plaza competition and it came from a team from Nantes, France. It’s called Canopy. And, it’s lovely. Lovely, however, only gets you so far, when the issue is getting something built. Until then, we’re left with a pretty picture […]

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[Photo courtesy of themikebot/flickr] There will be a forum this Wednesday (8/27) to talk about Williamsburg Walks, the project that shut Bedford Avenue to traffic on successive summer Saturdays. Word comes via the Neighborhood Watch blog from NAG: Did you enjoy Williamsburg Walks as much as we did? Would you like to see it come […]

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“Compared with New York, the District might lack a real Chinatown and authentic bagel shops, but all that doesn’t really matter when we don’t even have enough space to walk around. I realized this recently when visiting a friend in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, a mix of rowhouses, restaurants and small businesses similar to my […]

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Do you have any design and planning skills? Want to try your hand at redesigning a fairly wretched Brooklyn street and intersection? Your moment has arrived. Transportation Alternatives is sponsoring a “Designing the 21st Century Street” competition for the intersection. They say “We are looking for new conceptual and physical approaches to the planning of […]

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There’s an interesting sounding meeting that’s being put together in Gowanus on May 7. It will take place on Second Street at the Gowanus Canal from 6:30PM-8:30PM. Per an email that’s been posted by Tom Gray from Council Member Bill de Blasio’s office: I would like to invite you to be involved in an open […]

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Coney Island Development Corp. President Lynn Kelly sent out an email late yesterday about what she called “recent modest adjustments to the Coney Island zoning framework that have both strengthened our finalized plans and will help to move this critically important project toward completion.” Ms. Kelly adds that the changes have “increased development opportunities for […]

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This is an “environmentally-conscious public park space around the Gowanus Canal” called Sponge Park that comes from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and is designed by dlandstudio. There will be a presentation about it on Monday, April 21 at 6:30PM at PS 58, which is in Carroll Gardens at 330 Smith Street at the corner of […]

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At first glance, 197-a looks like one more addition to the alphabet soup of bureaucratic programs and acronyms and reminds one of 421-a. Both are important parts of how business is done in neighborhoods around the city, and particularly around Brooklyn. Yesterday Brownstoner noted that 197-a would get some teeth under a new bill introduced […]

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A new bill being introduced in the City Council could give some teeth to community-based planning for rezoning and other initiatives. The legislation, which is an offshoot of a Municipal Art Society effort, would give extend the influence of what are known as 197-a plans. Currently, the plans developed by the community have no legislative […]

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Those zoning text amendments drafted by the American Institute of Architects that would have allowed bigger buildings and were greeted by a lot of opposition once they were widely known, have been dropped. Queens Crap posted the full text of the AIA letter to Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden yesterday. The changes were complex, but would […]

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We don’t know a lot about the session that’s being planned to talk about Brooklyn Bridge Park, but we do know that it sounds like it’s going to be interesting. Groups that are working to develop the park in a manner that is different from the official Empire State Development Corp. model are holding it. […]

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Of all the things we would expect to find a fight about, the city’s “Green Streets” program is not one of them. Yet, there’s a battle about a plan in Gerritsen Beach, where GerritsenBeach.Net, which does superb work covering issues in that neighborhood and environs, has been writing about the fight, which includes some heavy-duty […]

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Community Board 1 will be making a decision about whether to support the Brooklyn Greenway along Kent Avenue and West Street. Because the waterfront esplanades that aren’t wide enough, the bikeway would have to go on the street and, as a result, some parking would have to be eliminated. A letter from the Brooklyn Greenway […]

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There was another meeting in Flatbush last night as part of the Imagining Flatbush 2030 effort to create a neighborhood-based framework for future planning. The Municipal Art Society has produced this video from an earlier session. It starts out with Mayor Bloomberg talking about the PlaNYC 2030 effort and moves on to discussions in Flatbush, […]

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Someday, current day Brooklynites (or their grandchildren) might be able to walk and bicycle on a huge greenway where the vile Gowanus Expressway once stood. Ideas to tear it down and bury it have been floated, but above is a new vision in today’s Daily News that was obtained by Jotham Sederstrom. He writes: The […]

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There’s an interesting competition underway to solicit ideas for reenvisioning and reimagining Grand Army Plaza. Per Streets Blog: The Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo) and the Design Trust for Public Space are launching an “Ideas Competition” called Reinventing Grand Army Plaza. Building on GAPCo’s on-going effort to re-envision this historic Brooklyn crossroads, the Ideas Competition […]

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The “future visioning” effort for Flatbush called Imagine Flatbush 2030 is coming up on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30 at the Brooklyn College Student Center. The effort is a joint venture of the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC) and the Municipal Art Society. Sustainable Flatbush describes it as: a community visioning and dialogue process — designed […]

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Someone finally posted a clean copy of that “Downtown Brooklyn 2012” video narrated by Sir Ian McKellen on YouTube without commercials or the New York Post logo, so we’re embedding it below. Regardless of how one feels about the vision that’s presented–strongly pro, strongly con or somewhere in between–it’s definitely worth five minutes of any […]

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Want to learn about the zoning and land use review process? The Fifth Avenue Committee is sponsoring workshops in early November. They are part of a series the group has been presenting. The workshops are called “Demystifying ULURP.” They are bilingual and there are two sessions, on Monday, Nov. 5th, 2-5 pm and on Tuesday, […]

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We finally paid a visit to the recently completed new plaza in front of the Brooklyn Library. It’s pleasant, although it looks like it could use more greenery in order to prevent it from become a sun-reflecting frying pan in the summer. We are not trying to nitpick, but we couldn’t help notice that the […]

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It appears that the interesting tenure of City Planning Commission member Dolly Williams, who is an appointee of Borough President Marty Markowitz, may be numbered according to Jotham Sederstrom writing in today’s Daily News. You might associate Ms. Williams’ name because she had to recuse herself from voting on the Atlantic Yards project because of […]

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Okay, the Barclays Center wouldn’t be in the front yard of this little yellow house on Dean Street, it would be across the street. Actually, one of the tall buildings attached to the arena would be across from across the street from this little 474 Dean. We’ve seen these kinds of juxtapositions before, but in […]

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There’s a meeting coming up on Monday (9/24) that asks “What if the Atlantic Yards project isn’t built?” or is only partly built and presents some alternate visions for the site. It’s called UNITY and will take place on Monday. The subject is “A realistic, community-sensitive proposal for the development of Brooklyn’s Vanderbilt rail yards. […]

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A big plan for a remake of Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill was posted yesterday. The document is the result of a long period of planning and community meetings by the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Parternship and the Project for Public Spaces. Streets Blog wrote of the effort: The days when Myrtle was […]

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Don’t look now, but the zoning recommendations for Coney Island will probably be out before the end of August. We don’t know if the date is official, but what we’re hearing is August 24 or August 28. This is in keeping with the word floating around in Coney circles that the zoning recommendations would be […]

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