I live on Dean Street in Prospect Heights. These photographs were taken in my neighborhood over the past 5 years, and explore the threats posed by Forest City Ratner’s “Brooklyn Utopia,” also known as “Atlantic Yards.” When the Atlantic Yards project was initially proposed, it was described in promotional flyers and in (the one and only issue to date) of The Brooklyn Standard with phrases like:

• “A Garden of Eden Grows In Brooklyn.”
• “Almost everything the well-equipped urban paradise must have...”
• “…will rise as a symbol of Brooklyn’s world-class status and her 21st Century potential.”
• “…will put us on the national sports stage for the first time since 1958”
• “…the vivid emblem of the borough’s renaissance...”

Clearly, the developer, and many of his supporters, believe that Brooklyn suffers from an inferiority complex, and the Atlantic Yards Utopia will be just the remedy for its supposed battered ego.

- Tracy Collins