In a startlingly candid interview with the New York Observer (click here to read it), AY landscape architect Laurie Olin defends his superblock design for the project by declaring that space on streets is "actually useless space".
Olin was explaining why his design demaps Pacific Street: to maximize the amount of open space, and to keep cars out of the project area. Olin dismissed criticism that his design would create a superblock as "1960's language" and a "cliche".
Olin's argument sounds persuasive, because creating more open space always sounds good. But taking away public streets to create open space in NYC's housing developments has always had the same result: park space that feels private, because it forms the backyard to private buildings. Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, and the Gowanus Houses all have open space that's configured in this way, and all of them feel like private enclaves, even if they're "publicly accessible", as the AY open space would be. (see diagram below to see the part of Pacific Street that would be demapped to create open space at the rear of the private buildings in the development).
In fact, streets define the public realm in NYC. Nearly every park in the city is surrounded by public streets. And streets themselves are places of activity and recreation. Far from being "useless space", Brooklynites use their streets to hang out on stoops and eat and drink in restaurants that spill out on to the sidewalk. Aside from parks and plazas, New York's public realm is its streets. (Below: a typical Brooklyn street)
The bottom line is that demapping Pacific Street would turn land that is now public into semi-private open space, mainly benefiting the developer and the future residents of the project, who will enjoy the use of parkland that won't be for all of us. Olin argues that the wide openings will encourage people who live away from the project to enter, but open space that's configured as a backyard will feel private no matter how big the openings to it are. And in the future, it's likely that condo owners living in the project will insist on security guards patrolling the park space, making it feel even more private. After all, it will be their backyard.
Like so much else in the Atlantic Yards, the superblock design and demapping of streets is the result of a developer-driven process. As Jonathan Cohn has written: "This is not a configuration of streets and blocks that an urban designer or an architect or the public could love; it’s a developer’s dream." Both alternative plans created by the community - the UNITY plan and the Pacific Plan - kept streets open and added new streets to create new connections between Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. Olin is a very talented designer, but his design for Atlantic Yards puts the public second.
