The Sunday Metro section discovers the Brooklyn blogosphere (no mention, btw, of OTBKB).

But they’ve got all the other usual suspects: Aaron Naparstak, Daniel Goldstein, nolandgrab, plus quite a few that OTBKB was unaware of. I’m hoping to have all Brooklyn bloggers at the First Annual Brooklyn Blog Festival on June 22 at the Old Stone House.

When a state agency released plans for studying the environmental
impact of the proposed Atlantic Yards project, a vast residential,
commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn, the response
from critics was swift, brutal — and largely online.

"Major
flaws in the final scope," pronounced Norman Oder, the proprietor of
the blog Atlantic Yards Report, pointing out that the agency, the
Empire State Development Corporation, had not examined the possible
security risks facing the 18,000-seat arena.

The architect Jonathan Cohn, who runs brooklynviews.blogspot.com,
noticed that the project’s developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, was
planning to use a part of the site as a temporary parking lot.

Another blogger, Aaron Naparstek, pored through the 41-page plan and
compared the project’s latest building designs to a "1960’s-era housing
project."

Like any developer, Forest City Ratner has had to
contend with suspicious community groups, concerned politicians and
skeptical editorial boards while seeking approval for the
8.7-million-square-foot venture.

But Atlantic Yards may well be
the first large-scale urban real estate venture in New York City where
opposition has coalesced most visibly in the blogosphere.

"If Jane Jacobs had the tools and technology back when she was fighting Robert Moses’
plans to bulldoze Lower Manhattan, I bet ‘The Death and Life of Great
American Cities’ would have been a blog," said Mr. Naparstek, 35,
referring to Ms. Jacobs’s seminal 1963 book criticizing the urban
renewal policies in vogue among city planners of that era.

About
a dozen blogs follow Atlantic Yards closely. The authors are usually
Brooklynites, some of them experts in fields like urban development.
But even the amateurs among them have boned up on arcane zoning
provisions and planning-law quirks that can induce headaches among the
less devoted.

The result is an unusual ferment of community
advocacy and opinion journalism, featuring everything from manipulated
caricatures of Forest City Ratner executives to technical discussions
of traffic flow.

There is also comedy: Last week, the Web site leathertomato.com
posted Atlantic Yards-themed versions of traditional Passover songs.
("Why is it that Brownstone Brooklyn consists of unleavened low-rise
buildings, but at Atlantic Yards Bruce Ratner wants to build 17
high-rise buildings?" asks a reworked "The Four Questions.")

"We
definitely follow the opposition Web pages," said Joe DePlasco, a
spokesman for Forest City Ratner and an occasional target of the
bloggers’ gibes. "They provide great access to clips and some of them
are pretty well written. There is, however, a sense of self-importance
and anger that often pops out." In November, Mr. DePlasco was the
subject of a 4,200-word blog item plumbing "the dark genius of Ratner
flack Joe DePlasco."

But the blogs more often focus on the project, which gained its own Web site — atlanticyards.com
— and recently had a list of what Forest City Ratner says are the
project’s benefits for Brooklyn residents. A day later, the site had
already drawn jeers from at least two blogs.

Mr. Cohn, the
architect, who lives in Park Slope, started Brooklyn Views this year
and quickly earned attention from other Atlantic Yards bloggers for his
analysis of the project’s floor-area ratio, a measure of density. His
argument — that the Atlantic Yards would be more dense than advertised
because it eliminated otherwise open city streets to create the
"superblock" on which the project will be built — was quickly added to
opponents’ talking points.

Daniel Goldstein, the spokesman for
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a group opposed to the Atlantic Yards,
said that the blogs "have been a key part of the public education about
the project."

Lumi Michelle Rolley, a Web designer who lives in Park Slope, is one of four people who run nolandgrab.org,
a site that rounds up news articles about Atlantic Yards and other
projects around the country where eminent domain is an issue. Media
criticism is a favorite activity among Atlantic Yards bloggers. Forest
City Ratner is the development partner in building a new Midtown
headquarters for The New York Times Company, a connection not missed by
those who have asserted that this paper’s coverage is too friendly to
the developer.

Mr. Oder said he spent up to 25 hours a week on atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com,
a successor to his original blog, Times Ratner Report. Hardly a
hearing, community meeting or news story relating to the project
escapes scrutiny.

He started blogging last September, he said,
because "Brooklyn would be one of the largest cities in the country if
it were a separate city."

"Then," he added, "it would have its
own daily newspaper, which would pay a lot more attention to the
largest real estate development in its history."