Bottom up

Everyone talks about diverse neighborhoods, but who actually does something about them?

To be frank, I had to see Brooklyn's Ditams Park and its Cortelyou Road to believe it. I have never seen such a range of people from the corners of the world as well as the U.S. I was able to infer all this from signage on door fronts and restaurants. It was all pretty amazing.

I got the story of how all this happened from Jan Rosenberg, one of the movers, who explained it all to me -- and sent me to this blog post from 2008 where she had described the work that was done.

It was bottom-up and it was sponatenous and it involved some energetic local people getting serious.

I get very antsy about the "visions" propounded by public officials carrying water for developers and exploiting eminent domain. Even worse, these eposides do not deliver like Jan Rosenberg and her Ditmas Park neighbors.