Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn reflects on the push-and-pull process by which development occurs throughout the borough and ends up sounding, dare we say, optimistic. Ah, idealism.

Brooklyn is having a moment the likes of which I haven’t seen since I moved here in 1991. All of a sudden it’s the it-borough: Manhattan is expanding eastward and the land grab of 2005 is a veritible gold rush. But there’s also a whole lot of shoutin’ going on. People are organizing and blogging and demonstrating and talking and petitioning and yelling and writing and speech making and thinking and…You get the idea. This is fighting the good fight Brooklyn style. And like Brooklyn, it’s smart and scrappy, down to earth, spunky and ambitious. It’s gotta be. Development on this scale represents big money, big politics, big corporations, and in some cases, big bad guys. It’s a tough fight to fight. But with the help of the activists, the urban historians, the humanistic theorists, the gurus of smart development, maybe, just maybe, some visionary plans can get generated and put to the test.

Postcard from The Slope: Loud [OTBKB]