ABSTRACT
In recent years, Brooklyn has been at the center of a national debate around gentrification, neighborhood change, and displacement. At a community meeting in Brooklyn, New York, hosted by Movement to Protect the People, New York Assembly member Charles Barron was speaking to the energetic crowd of organized community residents who had come out to discuss the economic changes happening in Brooklyn. He discussed the development of luxury housing in Brooklyn and how it was changing the community's character. Perhaps no development has gathered as much negative attention and activism in Brooklyn than the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project. The neighborhood's long-term residents and small business owners were concerned about such a large-scale development and what negative impact it would have on them economically and environmentally. Coalitions such as Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), a volunteer-run coalition of roughly twenty-one community organizations, stood in opposition to the Atlantic Yards project and fought hard to stop it.
