To the editor:
I am writing to thank you for your Jan. The current planning process doesn’t serve the interests of developers When there’s no communication, there’s no trust, and without Currently there is no coordination in the planning process for all the
31 issue that clearly lays out the massive changes taking place in
Brooklyn. I work with an organization named Brooklyn Vision, founded to
facilitate communication between community organizations and increase
the input that residents have in planning developments that will directly
impact their lives, and the lives of their children and grandchildren.
or the public. The public perceives secret, backroom planning that is
suddenly revealed as a completed project, leaving the public feeling victimized
and motivating them to distrust and resist all development. The developers
expect this resistance, and so feel they have to plan in secret and push
for more than they want in order to get the project they really want in
the face of public resistance.
trust the whole process is destined to result in destructive, costly struggles.
There are better ways.
developments going on, and the public is right to be concerned. Communicating
the scale of the problem has been a central effort for Brooklyn Vision.
Thank you for making our point.
—Jim Vogel,
Secretary, Brooklyn Vision Foundation
