u/hicestdraconis

For those who don’t know, Downtown Brooklyn is very built up with a good amount of density and high rise buildings. Most of the neighborhoods surrounding it are also highly walkable and most likely what you think of when you imagine “Brooklyn”.

But downtown Brooklyn itself sucks

There is no culture, no charm, no unique energy, and hardly any people on the street. I hope that with more infill in years to come a “character” might emerge. But right now it feels like one of the largest built urban conglomerations to spring up to verticality in the last few years has ended up as a soulless maze of glass boxes not much better than most car sprawl stroad suburbs. That’s despite being well connected to mass transit in the most walkable city in the US.

So what went wrong?

What lessons can developers and city planners learn to make sure we don’t repeat this mistake again? Hard to sell density and walkable urbanism when even NYC seems to struggle with getting it right.