Author Archives: Donna

Podcast Assignment

What do you think the speakers and interview subjects did particularly well to communicate their ideas? What questions do you still have, or what do you think they could have explained better? Feel free to link to 1-2 of your favorite podcasts if you regularly listen to ones you want to share.

I think the speakers in the How Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards Project Bruised the Community : Daily News Sports Talk podcast , from APRIL 22, 2016, did an informative job in explaining what the Atlantic Barclays Center was, what it is now (Pacific Park, Brooklyn ), what happened, what’s happening now, and what is predicted to happen. The speakers throws out many points about how this whole thing is a game. I like the way the speakers explained about the trouble of the creation of the projects. Basically explains what problems occurred during the process of how the Atlantic Barclays went down (in part one). More importantly, HOW it has EFFECTED THE COMMUNITY was the main goal the podcast is trying to express.  

Urban Walking

I live literally not even half a block away from the subway station. In the city, it seems a lot more convenient to find public transportation. There is also a lot more traffic because the streets are now designed to be more narrow because of the bicycle lanes and just one and two lanes for cars to drive. Where I live, when I step foot out of the door, I am facing a street where cars are waiting for the traffic light. Beyond that, is where the Sara D. Roosevelt park is. After I step foot out the door, I turn the left and start walking to reach the Grand Street train station, B and D. Before that, I have to wait at the stop sign for the light to change. Around where I live are mostly Asian markets and Asian bakeries, there will always be bakeries opened as earliest at 6am and filled with people rushing to buy breakfast. There is never a moment where I do not see a crowded street because many people just exited the subway station, meaning that I might have just missed my train.

Blog #1

Based on the two documentaries “My Brooklyn” and “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,” I learned that it is the elite, the wealthy, and the business developers who are in control of the “power” and have more say and “benefits” of many of the changes in the city. In the first documentary, “My Brooklyn” I noted that it was the City Council is in charge of the land use, where there it enabled for these developers to create these plans that changed the downtown Brooklyn neighborhood. Many of the developers targeted the Kings Plaza mall to replace it with a better one called Albee Fulton mall. Many of the people who already worked and lived there for many years had to relocate with no help at all, even after having a meeting with the City Council members. The people who were part of the downtown Brooklyn were displaced in many ways that they either lost businesses and their customers. This plan changed the community in many ways. I feel like one angle that “My Brooklyn” video focuses on is that this problem happened because neighborhood was of a “racial dynamic.”

I think we have the right to the city because many of us are paying the taxes and we do live in the city. Having developers pursue what they want will disrupt our communities. In both films, I understood that urbanization changed many of our lives and many ways that the city functions (for the better or the worse). Many of the events such as the protesting of building a highway or a mall could have been changed, if enough of the people and the community were able to fight the developers, such as how Jane Jacobs did, because she was skeptical about things and about the people who lived in the city.