SOLAR ACCESS RIGHTS
From
the perspective of Gehry’s surfeit of high-rise buildings – towering
up to 10 to 20 times higher than most of the surrounding neighborhoods – the
shadows of Gehry’s towers effectively takes possession of the
sun’s light. This taking represents an unchallenged, even
unacknowledged, transfer of potential wealth from hundreds of property
owners to a single private developer.
What puts this even more into the insult-to-injury zone is that taxes paid by those losing their solar access will go into subsidies for Gehry?s ?green? buildings. And, for the record, there is nothing so spectacularly Green about Gehry’s designs that might offset so many lost opportunities for individual Brooklynites to invest in alternative solar technologies. All this as area wide heating and lighting costs continue to spiral upwards over the next 20, 30 and more years.
By joining a languishing meme from the 1970’s and the belief of economists that the cost of anything can be calculated, led to suggesting that the State must determine the long term Cost of Shadows as part of assessing the presumed benefits of this project. Further, such analysis of alternatives to this project reveal their lack of significant overshadowing as a benefit that Gehry’s designs fail to deliver.
Additional information:
- The Cost of Shadows [PDF]
* For some ideas behind “memes”, see NOTES ON INTERVENTIONS