WTC Update

For two years I have been telling people that, all the fancy graphic presentations and architects' models notwithstanding, we really have no idea of what eventually will emerge on the World Trade Center site. Things became all the more uncertain this last week when a federal jury denied Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the property, his request for a double insurance payout. The whole grand project, based on the original design of Studio Daniel Libeskind, was predicated on the higher payout. Here's a good piece by Julia Vitullo-Martin from the Wall Street Journal (via Two Blowhards). Vitullo-Martin writes:

the World Trade Center had never been the monument to capitalism the terrorists believed it to be. Rather, it was the product of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's peculiar brand of government gigantism--immense office towers built on private land acquired under eminent domain, exempted from city building codes, and freed from all taxes to compete with the private sector.

The grand project has struck me all along as a potential boondoggle on the scale of, well, the World Trade Center itself. I have thought, and think, that we should let lower Manhattan seek its own level. The area is rebounding commercially as it is. It's not where it was in 2001 prior to the attacks, but it's well ahead of where it was a few years before that. The residential market down there has not only rebounded, but seems to me to be stronger than ever.

The jury decision may prove to be a blessing for lower Manhattan.

--Guest posted by Francis Morrone

Comments

[winifer skattebol]

Meanwhile, Julie Beckman, along with partner Keith Kaseman, designed the 9/11 memorial for the Pentagon. Composed of one hundred-eighty-four benches, each cantilevered over its own reflecting pool, the monument will honor the memories of the victims aboard the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon, and those of the people who were killed inside the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Maple trees, which will provide shade in summer and retain their foliage in winter, will adorn the structure.
"We hoped to inscribe in the earth the magnitude of what happened there that day; and in that inscription, we wanted to tell a story of who these individuals were, " according to Julie Beckman. "We wanted to invite personal interpretation, not to tell the visitor what to think or how to feel."

[ESL / EFL teacher]

I read in the New Yorker (I think) that Jane Jacobs thinks we should wait 15 years or so because it's impossible to know what's best right now. Considering her insights into the value of diversity, I'm a little surprised at her suggestion to wait. Isn't there something that would make the area more diverse?

[Benjamin Hemric]

I was at her CCNY talk last week and she said a bit more (and also a bit less) than what she said in the "New Yorker" about her thoughts regarding the World Trade Center site.

I too was surprised that she suggested waiting to redevelop the site (in both the "New Yorker" interview and the CCNY talk), but for a different reason. One of her criticisms of "classic" 1950s-style Robert Moses urban renewal developments is that the time necessary to bring them to fruition is usually so long that it puts a neighborhood into limibo and that this alone often has a negative impact on surrounding areas. The World Trade Center is a 16 acre site (that was orginally about 12 small city blocks) so the site is not inconsiderable -- especially considering that Lower Manhattan is pretty geographically small to begin with.

Also, I was surprised that she mentions in the "New Yorker" article that she favors building low-income housing that is kept that way, more or less, in perpetuity. This sounds like both the income sorting and the urban stultification that she criticizes in "Death and Life. . . ." And if I remember correctly, in "Death and Life . . ." she even goes out of her way to design a housing program that avoids these pitfalls.

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I think many people are uncomfortable with the whole idea of building at this site. Many believe it should be preserved as a memorial to all those we lost on 9/11.