The Eminent Domain
Formerly titled Building Blocks
Alyssa Katz, Editor, Pratt Center for Community Development
• Brooklyn, NY
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The Eminent Domain
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CONTACT INFO
Pratt Center for
Community Development
379 DeKalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 636-3486
To launch a news and information site to inform New York City residents about major real estate development projects that affect their neighborhoods. Spearheaded by the Pratt Center for Community Development, the project will initially provide news articles, Q&As, public hearing calendars and discussion forums focusing on the redevelopment of Coney Island in Brooklyn, the reuse of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, and the expansion of Columbia University onto a 17-block area of Harlem in Manhattan.
Check back for future news and updates.
Launched at the end of 2007, TheEminentDomain.org is populated with more than a dozen posts of original reporting and analysis on development in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. Plus:
“Our coverage occupied a unique space, stressing the importance of community involvement in the process but appropriately skeptical of both the deal and the manner in which it was reached. That kind of informed analysis is essential to meaningful public participation in the planning process and not available elsewhere.”
Katz says she and her New York University intern are deliberately posting at a moderate pace in order to make TheEminentDomain.org a more open and welcoming space to community contributors who might be turned off if the site seemed little more than a personal blog.
To elicit and solicit postings from the people, the Pratt Center is offering several trainings for residents and members of Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and FUREE, the community group in downtown Brooklyn.
“Our session is also going to include a workshop on ‘What Is News?’ to sharpen members’ story judgment,” says Katz. “The story judgment here has to be excellent, since the coverage has to be meaningful ... to other New Yorkers interested in how citizens can engage with planning for development.”
Katz says she’s beginning to look at opportunities to gain participation from city-wide organizations working on development issues, groups that embrace the center’s commitment to information-sharing as a vehicle for promoting democratic local engagement.
Outreach to promote the site is picking up. TheEminentDomain.org plans to pursue ad swaps with other Web sites covering New York City issues, such as streetsblog.org and gothamgazette.org. “We also expect our original reporting to be picked up by blogs covering city neighborhoods and development, Google Alerts on our issues, and news aggregators such as PlanNYC,” says Katz.
Based on feedback from community members, partners and journalists, the Pratt Center has decided to change the name of its project from Building Blocks to The Eminent Domain: Building Power and a Livable New York. According to Editor Alyssa Katz, “The name carries special relevance for New Yorkers involved in community planning, who’ve become concerned about the growing use and abuse of government powers to condemn property.” In Web lingo, Eminent Domain also means “a prominent and influential Web site,” which this site aims to become.
TheEminentDomain.org is currently being designed. Site producers are using WordPress along with some customized features, including a glossary of urban planning terms, a directory of key government players, links to Web sites of interest and brief guides to each of the 3 communities of coverage.
The Pratt Center has also decided to change geographic focus, to add downtown Brooklyn and drop Coney Island, while continuing with its commitment to covering Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx and Columbia University expansion in Harlem and Manhattan.
“We made this decision for several reasons,” says Katz. “A reliable and widely cited Brooklyn information and discussion site has been covering Coney Island quite successfully. ... The dailies have been doing a decent job as well. Development in Coney Island is reaching an impasse between the owner of much of the property and the city, so there will be relatively few events and issues to cover.”
Pratt Center has forged a partnership with Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), a membership organization based in downtown Brooklyn and surrounding neighborhoods (including two major housing projects) that advocates for local residents in the development process. FUREE had been thinking about creating its own online forum for community discussion, a Web site where participants in a teen writing project could post their stories. Now, its members will contribute to TheEminentDomain. “FUREE and the Pratt Center are especially excited about creating a space on the Web where elite decision-makers and neighborhood residents will be part of the same conversation,” says Katz.
Another content coup: The lead community organizer participating in negotiations over the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Northwest Bronx has agreed to post regular updates. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is the primary partner for the new Web site.
Although its role in the zoning process over Columbia University expansion has ended, Pratt partner Community Board 9 will still wield influence in public discussion and leaders will use TheEminentDomain Web site to get information out about its activities.
Katz says Pratt Center is hoping to partner with the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University (NYU) School of Law, which publishes PlanNYC, an online portal for the latest research, media stories and public documents related to housing and development throughout NYC. Katz proposed to add an RSS feed of PlanNYC headlines to TheEminentDomain home page. But the Furman Center expressed reservations that the RSS feed might imply an endorsement of the work of particular community groups or the views posted by citizen bloggers.
“The concern generated a useful discussion of the editorial process, and our plans to edit and fact check all contributions,” says Katz. “We’ve agreed to discuss the proposition further once we have a full template for the site completed.”
In fall 2007, Pratt Center hired an NYU journalism student intern to aggregate content and compile resources, including a public events calendar, news articles and blog links. TheEminentDomain.org is scheduled for a soft launch on November 30 and a full launch in late winter 2008. Once up and running, the intern will contribute original reporting of meetings and hearings, and will help fact check submissions by community partners and others.
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