Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #33: Is Eminent Domain Being Used with Restraint? NO

This is evaluation item #33 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Is Eminent Domain Being Used with Restraint? NO

Jane Jacobs was aware that eminent domain was an extraordinarily drastic and ruthless tool which, even in those situations where it can properly be defended involves the causation of ruinous harm (even with full compensation being paid). The question then is whether it is being used with restraint. In the case of Atlantic Yards the answer is “no.” It is clear that at least one complete block, the block with the Ward Bakery building, (which block wraps around another similar block that is not being condemned) is being condemned without any good reason. This block (where the historic Ward Bakery building was acquired and torn down) is the home to many other worthy buildings, such as Henry Weinstein’s, that are indistinguishable in quality from those not being torn down on adjacent property. It has been noted by us and others how odd and unprecedented it is to have a historic district (the recently designated Prospect Heights Historic District) and an eminent domain site interlock like strangely configured jigsaw puzzle pieces.

If anything, the block with Weinstein's building on it is a survivor that ought to continue to survive. It spent forty years adjacent to a city-declared urban renewal site (the ATURA, or "Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Site" without city officials ever thinking that it should be considered part of that redevelopment site. While technically it abutted that ATURA site, it was physically and for practical purposes separated from the ATURA by the Vanderbilt rail yard cut. While the rail yards were nominally included in the ATURA they were more of a practical barrier between the sites considered blighted 40 years ago and property on the Prospect Heights side. For 40 years there was no focus on the developing the yards themselves and city officials apparently never thought that the abutting blocks in Prospect Heights which were economically healthy should be included. If anything, that area recently has been thriving even more.
(Above: Why is eminent domain being used to take the properties on this block that used to have the Ward Bakery Building on it? Why cross the rail yards to take down all the buildings visible on that block in the Google Earth image of the site outlined below? For more about the greed of including this block in the site click here.)

(Image above from our Wednesday, October 29, 2008, Puzzle Pieces: Proposed Prospect Heights Historic District, LPC Public Hearing.)

(Image above of interlocking project site where condemnation will be used and Prospect Heights Historic District by Tracy Collins.)
(Image above from Atlantic Yards Report: Henry Weinstein’s building on the same block as where the Ward Bakery Building was torn down.)

JJ Cites: [The direct consequences of the exercise of the power of eminent domain on the commercial tenant is drastic and often ruinous. P. 311. . .by employing quite extraordinary and ruthless social powers. P 313]

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #32: Is Eminent Domain's Full Cost Being Reckoned and Paid For? NO

This is evaluation item #32 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Is Eminent Domain Being Used in a Way That the Full Cost of it Is Reckoned and Paid For? NO

Jane Jacobs was not 100% per cent against the use of eminent domain but her thinking involved giving its use a very high degree of scrutiny and she put forth several separate standards to apply before resorting to its use. Jacobs asserted that if eminent domain was used, the full actual value of what was being supplanted should be paid for. Probably this is an appropriate standard for social justice, especially when privately used land is being taken to be given over to another private owner for a use, which as is the case of Atlantic Yards, might even be the same use. However, there was another prime reason to require that full value be paid: so that the vitality and viability of that which must be supplanted will not be quashed but will be able to move and locate elsewhere without diminishment. She thereby sought to preserve diversity. Lastly, paying full value supported achievement of another standard, which is that the public should not use eminent domain without being fully cognizant of the actual economic trade-offs underlying the decision.

The law has not changed since Jane Jacobs' time so that payment of full value as she proposed is not required and would not be done in the case of Atlantic Yards. Jacobs spoke of paying for such things as businesses' "good will" and the value of relationships and intricacies that had been built up over time. She did not mention, but might have, that part of what condemned landowners in the Atlantic Yards footprint will lose and will not be compensated for is the reasonable expectation that their property would be the subject of an upzoning. It is quite reasonable to assume that absent Atlantic Yards the public would attempt to upgrade this area by allowing and encouraging additional development (in a more gradual mixed way Jacobs would have approved) by upzoning these properties. With Atlantic Yards, this will not occur. Instead, the Ratner organization will be attempting to acquire these properties at values reflecting low FARs associated with their current zoning. (Or even far below as recent disclosures show.) Then the Ratner Organization (rather than these owners) will, through the effects of a zoning override permitting massively more development, get substantially more value from this property than the organization paid for it.

JJ Cites: [(P)ublic subsidies for land clearance or spot clearance are far from the only subsides, Involuntary subsidies, immense in the aggregate, go into these enterprises too. . . . This use of eminent domain does more than physically possible the assembly of project tracts. It also makes them financially possible, owing to the involuntary subsidy entailed. P. 311 The community as a whole should bear the expense of community progress and that cost should not be imposed upon the unfortunate victims of community progress. P. 312 In cases where powers of eminent domain were used, the purchase prices should include the realistic, full costs . . .The purpose of paying, rather that exacting unjust involuntary subsidies, would be to avoid killing off city diversity gratuitously. To have to pay would, on the other hand make it realistically possible for dislocated enterprises to relocate and continue to live (preferably in the neighborhood) and would, on the other hand, enforce selectivity- - allowing that which is worth more to remain. P. 331, 332]

Be Careful What (Change of Law) You Ask For; You Might NOT Get It: Atlantic Yards and 1967's Rejected NYS Constitutional Amendment

In the years we spent as a lawyer in government we drafted and supervised the drafting and proposal of a substantial volume of legislation. A respectable amount of it passed. Some of it didn’t. That’s what brings us to the point where we will begin a discussion addressing why eminent domain cannot be used for Forest City Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards.

The first rule of proposing a change to the law, by passage of legislation or otherwise, is to consider if you really need the change or whether it is possible to construe the law as already saying what you want it to. Why? Because if you propose a change in law and fail that failure will forever afterwards stand as evidence you CAN’T then interpret the law as already saying what you want it to. This is for two reasons. First, proposing a change in law puts on the record the evidence that everyone and most particularly the legal experts on the subject, believe that the law DOESN’T already say what you are asking it to be changed to say, and second, when the proposed change in law doesn’t pass it shows that those who voted it down (those with authority and from whom the law flows) are opposed to modification of the law to make it say what you proposed.

In 1967 New York State Voters Rejected Eminent Domain for “Economic Development”

All this is relevant because in 1967 New York State voters voted against a “public use” amendment to the New York State constitution proposed for the purpose of permitting the use of eminent domain for “economic development.” Even though that amendment was rejected state agencies officials are attempting to use eminent domain in exactly that way at the proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment site.

Gelinas’s Wall Street Journal Op-ed Summary of Arguments

The other day Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute explained this very nicely in a an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal: The Empire State and Eminent Domain, November 14, 2009. Though her arguments reflect those of lawyer Matt Brinkerhoff in DDDB’s petition now before the state’s highest court in the Goldstien v. Pataki eminent domain appeal we were impressed with the way Ms. Gelinas’s boiled them down to simple op-ed directness:

1. The New York State Constitution did not permit eminent domain taking for “economic development.”

2. In 1967 New York voters rejected an attempt to change the Constitution so that eminent domain could be used for “economic development.”

3. In the face of such rejection New York State officials, wanting to do the Atlantic Yards “economic development” project, have attempted to redefine “blight” as “underdevelopment,” thus circumventing the voters’ rejection of eminent domain for “economic development.” (Under prescribed circumstances, the state Constitution permits the use of eminent domain to remove blight.) Addressing herself to the AKRF report by virtue of which the state agencies (pretextually) found the “blight” they needed to seize property, Ms. Gelinas writes:

Mainly, however, the report pointed to "underutilization" of the land, concluding that the area wasn't being used to the maximum economic benefit allowed by law. But that means the Atlantic Yards is really an economic-development project—and that the politicians along with Mr. Ratner want to manage Brooklyn's economy rather than let competitive forces continue to improve the neighborhood.

4. We would add to Ms. Gelinas’s points this additional observation offered as a comment extending her point #3 above by Mike McDougal in a discussion of her article on The Volokh Conspiracy (New York: Where “Underutilization” Equals “Blight”). He says that all development can therefore be promoted as ostensible “blight” removal:

That’s exactly right. Another obvious way to put it is this: Every rational for-profit real estate developer is attempting to eliminate “blight.”

Prospect Heights: Not a Slum, Not in Need of Eminent Domain for Development

Ms. Gelinas points out (as we have) that the Prospect Heights neighborhood wasn’t a slum (i.e. wasn’t “blighted”) and that government intervention to improve the neighborhood was superfluous as private market forces were already taking advantage of the development opportunities there:

In fact, the Prospect Heights neighborhood that Mr. Goldstein and his wife have made their home is hardly a slum. Prospect Heights was thriving before Atlantic Yards construction began. It's a hip neighborhood that's a short hop on the subway from Manhattan.

To meet the needs of in-flowing residents, developers had been converting sturdy old warehouses into condos. One of the newer arrivals, Mr. Goldstein, paid $590,000 in 2003 for his three-bedroom condo in a distinctive, eight-story dry-goods warehouse designed by a renowned Chicago architect and solidly built nearly 80 years before. His neighborhood was home, too, to small-scale industrial firms and a still-operating Prohibition-era bar, as well as to working-class renters.

Unrevealed Ratner Megadevelopment Not a “Public Project”

Ms. Gelinas utilizes developer Bruce Ratner’s immediately infamous November 8, 2009 quote that appeared in a Crain’s interview to remind us that the sort of projects the state would bring into existence don’t even have to involve revealed plans or actually be considered “public projects.” Crain’s reported about asking Mr. Ratner about his mega-project’s designs and said, “Mr. Ratner refuses to discuss what the project will look like, whether or not it will include an office building and even who will design the first residential tower” . . . “He has no intention of sharing the designs for the complex.” And the exact Ratner quote that has now become infamous? Here is Ms. Gelinas slipping in appropriate commentary:

Just last week, Mr. Ratner bristled at requests from a reporter at Crain's New York Business to see his specific building plans. "Why should people get to see plans?" he said. "This isn't a public project." A curious statement, given the state's use of eminent domain on behalf of the project.

Pfizer Shadow on Kelo Case

Ms. Gelinas’s op-ed ran Saturday, November 14th. Only days before, news broke (covered in the New York Times paper edition on Friday) that Pfizer Pharmaceutical has announced that it was leaving the New London, Connecticut even though New London cleared the land Pfizer was vacating via the challenged use of eminent domain in what became the highly controversial Kelo litigation that went to the Supreme Court.

The Kelo case, which said that the federal Constitution doesn’t prohibit the use of eminent domain for economic development, is mentioned by Ms. Gelinas who says, “The decision sparked a national outcry that led more than 40 states to pass restrictions on eminent domain,” She probably did not have time for a last-minute revision to her op-ed to refer to the Pfizer departure. No need: Almost anyone reading Ms. Gelinas’s critique would have been reminded by the concurrently breaking Pfizer departure news that while governments intruding with eminent domain may preferentially anoint one owner to replace another (even a developer to replace other already active developers as at Atlantic Yards), these subsidized rearrangements are more likely to fail economically than what they replace.

Why these forced rearrangements of ownership so often fail is something we will have to return to at length in another post, but it partly has to do with the way that the new owners have less “skin in the game” than the old. Ms. Gelinas deals with one indicator of this diminished investment on the part of the newcomers when she writes about the Atlantic Yards developer’s offers of compensation for the condemned property that are unfairly below market. (Something we have also written about.)

Jane Jacobs?

Suffice it to say that the decisions of the New York voters not to amend the New York Constitution to permit the use of eminent domain for “economic development” was probably a wise one. Perhaps some of those 1967 voters were thinking of what they had read in Jane Jacob’s seminal book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” that came out in 1961. It doesn’t seem all that long ago but we wonder if government officials think it has been long enough to forget the lessons we learned from Jacobs.

What the State Constitution Says

The provision of the State of New York Constitution (in the “Bill of Rights”* Article I, Section 7) that prohibits the taking of private property except for public use says now, as it said in 1967:

Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.

(* To read what we wrote about how Alexander Hamilton presumed our New Yorkers liberties would be protected without a state bill of rights, click here.)

(There is a long line of cases that interpret this provision and the similarly worded federal Constitution to mean that private property cannot be taken unless the taking is for public use. In other words, it isn’t enough to pay compensation, whether just or otherwise.)

What the State Constitution Doesn’t Say

In 1967 the above provision of the state Constitution was proposed to be amended to add the words “public purpose” so that it would then have read as follows (emphasis supplied):

Private property shall not be taken or damaged, as such term is defined by law, for public use or purpose without just and timely compensation.

Because of prior case law the exact intent of inserting the words “or purpose” to eliminate the restriction on the use of eminent domain for “economic development” was well-defined. As noted, it was rejected.

Making a Federal Case of the State Constitution?

Is the New York State’s Constitution worded similarly to the federal Constitution and should it be similarly interpreted? The question is important because, as noted, the Kelo decision says that (within the parameters it describes) the federal Constitution does not prohibit the use of eminent domain for “economic development” which is why the fifty states have been addressing the question with their own laws.

Though there are some similarities of wording, there are some very important differences in the wording of the two constitutional provisions and the New York Constitution should be interpreted differently from the federal Constitution. For one thing, even if the wording were the same (as it once was long ago) the difference in the legislative history that includes the New York State voters’ 1967 rejection of “economic development” use, would necessitate diverging interpretations. Beyond this, words have been added to the state Constitution over time that make it clear that the unamended “public use” phrase is to be strictly construed.

Wisdom of 1846

In 1846, without changing the original clause, language was added into the state Constitution specifically for the limited purpose of allowing the opening of private roads across another’s private land if roads were necessary. (Given the premium this rare and specific amendment places on the value of road access, it is interestingly ironic that the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment involves the closing and shutting down of public streets, sidewalks and avenues to convert them into developer-owned property.) This amendment incorporated a procedural protection that no such taking for a private use could not occur unless a “jury of freeholders” (fellow property owners) first determined the “necessity of the road and the amount of all damage to be sustained by the opening thereof.” In contrast, when New York State agencies today try to use eminent domain they declare that they are entitled to avoid any impartially adjudicated fact-finding as to whether their actions make sense, are justifiable and non-pretextual. They also avoid having to do any assessment of the damage they are doing to the community.

Wisdom of 1894

1894 saw a similar specific change, adding additional language to the constitution that permitted construction on the land of others of “drains, ditches and dykes” as drainage for agricultural lands (now also swamps) but only pursuant to the passage of “general laws” together with a belt-and-suspenders prohibition that “no special laws shall be enacted for such purposes.” Ergo, in 1894 New York State citizens amending the state Constitution were on guard against the kind of selective favoritism by which government officials are conspicuously specially benefitting Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer.

In Brief, There Are Even More Arguments

It should be said that while we have interjected some of our own editorializing, most of the above analysis is from the legal arguments in the brief for the plaintiffs in the Goldstein v. Pataki case challenging the use of eminent domain which is now before our state’s highest court. The above is but a fraction of the multiple arguments they have presented in making a very good case, all of which bear reading.

Respect the Wisdom of the 1967 Voters and Our State Constitution

Now to reiterate what we have said here. The record shows in 1967 it was the consensus of legal experts that the New York State Constitution did not permit eminent domain takings for “economic development.” The voters then rejected an attempt to change this situation. New York State officials have now attempted to circumvent the voters’ rejection by redefining “blight” as “underdevelopment” which would mean that eminent domain could be used to anoint any developer as the owner of any development the developer wishes to undertake. Finally, we have warned that such economic development projects involving politically connected developers receiving heavy subsidies are bad policy because they are more likely to fail economically than what they replace. That means the voters were wise when they refused to change to the state Constitution to permit abuses like those of the proposed Atlantic Yards, which come dressed in pretextual but unspecified and unevaluated “public benefit.”

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #31: Making Good Use of Gradual Money? NO

(This turtle is incorporated in this bank architecture, found on Montague Street, Brooklyn, as a symbol of the value of the slow and steady investment of money.)

This is evaluation item #31 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Making Good Use of Gradual Money? NO

Jane Jacobs was supremely conscious of the good that money well and properly spent could create and was not, per se, against subsidies. However, she saw the most valuable form of money as gradual money spent slowly for gradual changes, building on and supplementing what exists. That money could come in through public spending and subsidy. Jacobs was also aware that in situations like Atlantic Yards where there is massive misdirection of public funds and subsidy into cataclysmic spending, each dollar the public spends cataclysmically creating destruction also represents a dollar that could, instead, have been spent gradually for public good. So, the misdirection of funds is, at least, a double loss to the public.

JJ Cites: [In order of size of their mortgage holdings, the most important of these institutions are . . .mortgage lenders . . By far the lion’s share of building, remolding rehabilitation, replacement and expansion that occurs in cities . . .is financed by this kind of money. P. 292 The kind of money necessary for capitalizing upon, building upon and supplementing what exists is gradual money. P. 292 Lack of gradual money wastes city districts already inherently fit for city, and therefore with a great potential for rapid improvement. It also means that there is no hope for districts that lack one or more of the conditions for generating diversity, and need help in acquiring these supplements, as well as money for normal changes and for worn-out structures. P. 307, 308 Nor is there any inherent reason why public buildings must be sorted out and assembled into civic and cultural cataclysms. They can be built and located as ingredients of gradual change, to supplement and enliven their matrix of living city. We only do it the other way because we think it is right. P. 314 ]

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #30: Avoidance of Cataclysmic Money? NO

This is evaluation item #30 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Avoidance of Cataclysmic Money? NO

Part of Jane Jacobs genius was to point out that money could be destructive when it floods in faster than it can be constructively used. Even if good is “intended” by it, it can be too much of a good thing. She calls this “cataclysmic money” and identifies more than one form of it, but one of its most important forms, especially these days and in the case of Atlantic Yards, is public funding and subsidy. Even though or despite the fact that the Atlantic Yards area was, through natural economic processes, attracting substantial economic capital and creating million dollar co-ops and condos, Atlantic Yards is a supreme example of something with so many bad economic equations it would never happen except for public subsidy. That subsidy is overriding private enterprise in a huge way that ought to be offensive to conservative and liberal thinkers alike.

Since we wrote the original version of this article it has become highly evident that Atlantic Yards, if it proceeds, is likely to take decades to complete, perhaps three or four. If, as likely, it does indeed take decades, then money that goes into it (including subsidy of perhaps $2-3 Billion) will, in real terms, go into the mega-monopoly over decades but that money will still have a cataclysmic effect since the entire megadevelopment is being induced by what is essentially* an up-front promise of all that subsidy. That, in turn, is resulting in the wholesale present day destruction of the neighborhood with many buildings being torn down now and ownership of much of the neighborhood changing hands now to thereafter lie fallow or underutilized in the hands of the developer.

(* Although much of the subsidy, particularly the housing portion, is not yet technically committed and amounts have not been specified or made public, ESDC and the MTA, by giving the developer a monopoly on the development of the land (essentially an option), the public agencies have put themselves in a preposterously poor negotiating position that will enable the developer to blackmail the public for the remainder of the subsidy that the mega-project plan in fact envisions. That blackmail is likely to be for that remainder amount plus more.)

(Below: Rendering by the Municipal Art Society showing the teardown of the neighborhood the Ratner project plan involves. At this point, even some of the replacement buildings shown above next to the arena probably won't come in the near future either. -Original Aerial Photograph by Jonathan Barkey.)
JJ Cites: [Cataclysmic money pours into an area in concentrated form, producing drastic changes. As an obverse of this behavior, cataclysmic money sends relatively few tickles into localities not treated to cataclysm. P. 293 . So cumbersome is this form of city investment that it serves better, in many instances, to paralyze and penalize the use of money rather then to stimulate and reward it. Ever greater incentives must constantly be contrived to give investment in this type of cataclysm another shot and another shove.. . . “Some cities using federal funds have acquired so much land without rebuilding that the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency has become the largest grower of ragweed. P. 294, 295 After the drought came fantastic floods. . . . In the case of a mistake like the Edsel, a point is reached when expenditures is reappraised and halted. But in East Harlem, citizens today have to fight off still more money for repetitions of mistakes that go unappraised by those who control the money floodgates. . . Lack of gradual money wastes city districts already inherently fit for city, and therefore with a great potential for rapid improvement. It also means that there is no hope for districts that lack one or more of the conditions for generating diversity, and need help in acquiring these supplements, as well as money for normal changes and for worn-out structures. Where is the money from conventional sources which might be going into gradual change? Where does it go instead? Some of it goes into planned cataclysms of redevelopment and renewal; more of it is going into self-destruction of diversity, to the ruination of outstanding city success. P 307,308 (t)here is apt to be no relationship between city-created and city-needed savings, and city-building investment. P 308.309 Does this mean, however, that our more institutionalized money nowadays can be used only cataclysmically? Are the great bureaucracies of money such big fish that they can operate only in cities of big fish, huge borrowers, immense and abrupt changes? Is a system which is able in one of its manifestations to retail credits, gently. . able in other manifestations only to distribute credit violently in wholesale lots? This city-building money operates as it does not because of its own internal necessities and forces. It operates cataclysmically because we, as a society, have asked for just this. P. 309 Social sponsorship of these cataclysms is taken for granted. This is the public’s contribution to city rebuilding. The public understands less well that sponsoring these cataclysmic uses of private investment in these cities it has also made an enforced choice among various differing forms of private investment. P 311. Project building as a form of city transformation makes no more sense financially than it does socially. P. 313 Public housing money is employed cataclysmically instead of for gradual, steady street and district improvement, because we thought cataclysms would be good for slum dwellers- - and a demonstration to the rest of us of the good life. P. 314 The decay of our cities goes deeper and more complicated. It goes right down to what we think we want, and to our ignorance about how cities work. The forms in which money is used for city building- - or withheld from use - - are powerful instruments of city decline today. P. 317.]

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #29: Using Public Participation in Shaping Cities? NO

This is evaluation item #29 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

(Above: Side by side the community-developed UNITY Plan and the much denser massing of the Atlantic Yards plan forced on the community without consultation or input.)

Using Public Participation in Shaping Cities? NO

Jane Jacobs viewed the people who live in city neighborhoods as having the most important (empirically derived) first hand expertise about their neighborhoods. She therefore believed that getting their input is a supremely critical aspect of the planning process. By comparison, she discounts the value that “experts” have to offer in the process. Normally, planning for big developments involves the public in the planning through the City’s ULURP process. In the case of Atlantic Yards, the process of involving the public through ULURP was sidestepped using a mechanism that people probably never expected would be used to sidestep projects of this magnitude after the City’s Charter was amended to create the ULURP process. Furthermore, since the public in the vicinity of the Atlantic Yards projects has many valid objections and criticisms of the project it has been counterproductive to shunt them aside, unlistened to by the developer and associated politicians.

JJ Cites: [(T)he proceedings are heartening, because of the abounding vitality, earnestness and sense with which so many of the citizens rise to the occasion. . . They tell with wisdom and often eloquence about things they know first-hand from life. P. 407 we have at least a dim glimmering chance . .to protect . . from the oversimplications of the experts. . . P. 407. Administrative systems which have lost the power to comprehend, to handle and to value an infinity of vital, unique, intricate and interlocked details. P. 408 Much of what they need to know they can learn from no one but the people of the place, because nobody else knows enough about it. P. 409, 410 . . the vital time for coordinating intelligence is before and during the time that even tentative proposals are conceived or tactics worked out for specific services in any specific place. P. 416 The voters sensibly decline to federate into a system where bigness means local helplessness, ruthless, oversimplified planning and administrative chaos- - P.427 . . planners frequently seem to be less well equipped intellectually for respecting and understanding particulars than ordinary people, untrained in expertise, who are attached to a neighborhood, accustomed to using it, and so are not accustomed to thinking of it in generalized or abstract fashion. P. 441]

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #28: Observes the Goal of Creating Political Access (Inc. Goal of Countering Public Money Expenditures

This is evaluation item #28 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Jane Jacobs was concerned with cities as working organisms. As one part of this concern, she wrote about consciously creating communities within cities that will have political access and effective influence to represent the interests of neighborhoods. Rather than respecting this as a goal, Atlantic Yards has progressed in the opposite fashion, stripping communities of their say-so about the project. When Community Board 6 voted 35-4 to disapprove of the project as proposed in the July 18, 2006 General Project Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement “because it will cause irreparable damage to the quality of life in the borough of Brooklyn,” the Brooklyn Borough President who stands apart in supporting Atlantic Yards removed members from that board on a wholesale basis. Jane Jacobs was also critical of the way that expenditures of public money were also sometimes used as a distracting sort of candy to try and nullify the political rights of voters. Expenditures of public funds have been waived around by the Atlantic Yards megadeveloper in a distracting way creating a misimpression that the same money would not be better spent elsewhere by others, were it not given to the megadeveloper. One obvious example is the way that Atlantic Yards would concentrate public resources available for the “public benefit” of more affordable housing preferentially on the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment even though Atlantic Yards will inefficiently absorb more subsidy per affordable unit than alternative projects. (Taking the distracting use of money probably one step further than Jacobs thought about, developer Forest City Ratner provides funds to all of the signatories of the "Community Benefits Agreement" in return for their uncritical support of the megaproject.)

JJ Cites: [A city’s very wholesomeness in bringing together people with communities of interests is one of its greatest assets, possibly the greatest. And, in turn, one of the assets a city district needs is people with access to the political, the administrative, and the special-interest communities of the city as a whole. P. 119 . .wherever they work best, street neighborhoods have no beginnings and ends setting them apart as distinct units. . . . It is part of a set of interweaving neighborhoods containing great diversity, not a strip. P.120 A district has to be big and powerful enough to fight city hall. (E)ffective neighborhood physical planning for cities should aim at these purposes: First to foster lively and interesting streets, second, to make the fabric of these streets as continuous a network as possible through a district of potential subcity size and power. Third, to use parks and squares and public buildings as part of this street fabric; use them to intensify and knit together the street fabric’s complexity and multiple use. They should not be used to island off subdistrict neighborhoods. P. 129 There are only two ultimate public powers in shaping and running American cities: votes and control of public money. . . . Robert Moses, whose genius as getting things done largely consists of understanding this, has made an art of using control of public money . . . The art of negating the power of votes with the power of money . . . (S)eduction or subversion of the elected is easiest when the electorate is fragmented into ineffective units of power.” P. 13]