No one objects to a development of the Atlantic Yards site. What's surprising is the notion that the choice is seen to consist of FCRC/Gehry's vision of the project or nothing else.

While I think the project as imagined is ill-conceived to the point of criminal—driven by the developer's greed, the architects fragile ego, and its political supporters' opportunism—I think a large, architecturally significant development is exactly the solution to the site. Atlantic Yards just isn't the solution.

The hypertrophic "Oz" Ratner et all have envisioned is a fantasyland that is neither appropriate to site, nor will it serve the vast majority of the people of Brooklyn. The development is many things—a means to further enrich Ratner and his investors, a way for Ratner to enter the "A" list of developers, a chance for Gehry to have the last laugh he's been waiting 30 years to have on his detractors-but what it is clearly not, is a blessing for Brooklyn.