Anyplace, Brooklyn: A Downtown Brooklyn Walking Tour

Filed under Walk/Tour, projects

Event Information

Artist: Samara Smith
Website: http://www.anyplacebrooklyn.com

This walking tour of Downtown Brooklyn, uses documentary sounds, interviews and guided observation to explore critical issues raised by the city’s development plan including: public space, democracy, eminent domain, freedom of expression and privatization. The participant explores two very distinct areas of downtown Brooklyn: the bustling, small business area catering predominantly to African-Americans on and around Fulton Mall, and the privately owned public space called Metro Tech commons catering to corporate office workers. While experiencing two highly contrasted versions of what public life in NYC can be, the participant learns that the city has passed the Downtown Brooklyn Development Plan to encourage more towering office and residential construction in the area, expanding the Metro Tech complex into the low-rise Fulton Mall area. Through narration and interviews with area residents, activists and shoppers, this walking tour asks the listener to consider the anti-democratic nature of this urban planning process and the proposed plans effect on street and community life, while beginning to imagine the kind of public space and city they would like to live in.

Please sign up to participate in this project at anyplacebrooklyn@gmail.com