I took this from I’m Seeing Green.

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is having a number of events this weekend. The Walkathon is on Saturday at noon. You can show up and walk (or not walk and contribute to DDDB’s legal fund.

Just in case you’re in the dark about DDDB it is one of the organizations leading the fight against Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards behemoth. They need money to fund the legal challenge against Ratner.

In other news, Ron Shiffman (a former member of the City Planning Commission, and who was long-time head of the PICCED, Pratt Institute for Community and Economic Development,) cited an enormous development–more than 300 acres–in Hamburg, Germany that has tried to draw on the example of BPC and other projects. "The first thing they did was engage the public in a discussion about the principles of what they want developed," he said. contrasted Hamburg’s effort with two projects at home. “What we’re seeing at Atlantic Yards, and at Columbia today, is the public facilitating a private development without any prediscussion as to what would benefit the public as a whole, what social infrastructure, environmental infrastructure, and economic infrastructure we should be turning over to the city," said Shiffman, who has joined the advisory board of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. "It’s basically how to facilitate the goals of the private developer.”

However, Gubernatorial frontrunner Eliot Spitzer yesterday said that he considers the promised 8% reduction in the Atlantic Yards project a "reasonable compromise," thus suggesting he has no idea that the cutback would bring the project back to the square footage originally proposed.

Walk it off on Saturday!