I think that with all the talk about context in the debate about Atlantic Yards, it is important to remember the larger context: the history of Brooklyn. The incorporation of the city of Brooklyn into New York City a century ago has been a disaster, and those of us who were born and raised in Brooklyn in the second half of the twentieth century know only a place of decaying infrastructure, ever increasing poverty and marginalization. I think that this depressing reality is what makes so many Brooklynites (including myself) support this flawed project in spite of our reservations. We are not convinced by the people (especially from elsewhere) fretting about the loss of Brooklyn's charm as a tattered backwater of affordable housing. It is a city and it needs to evolve if it will live. The concerns about traffic congestion, street closings, overextending city services are very real, but they are inevitable problems that any large scale project would bring up. There will never be a perfect plan, and the wonderful thing about a real city is that it will be able to meet those challenges with new solutions in an ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of the urban fabric: that is what a vibrant dynamic city does, and that is what Brooklyn has not been allowed to do for a long, long time.