Finding no legal impediments in the way of the construction of a controversial housing project in a section of north Brooklyn that has been the subject of almost a decade of court battles, a judge has dismissed a suit filed by civic groups and residents who want to halt the project.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also used his ruling to make a broader assessment of housing in New York City—namely that the city needs more of it, but that developers are subject to a “Byzantine review process that seems like Rube Goldberg, Franz Kafka, and the Marquis de Sade cooked it up over martinis.”