A Stretch Beyond Skyscrapers

By Jane Holtz Kay

Even as workers dug through the grim remains of the World Trade Center, the developer's eye was on the prize. The lease-holders of the once soaring glass towers took a stance: the downed duo should give way to a new foursome.

The builders would flout the terrorists' deed with this living, breathing, resuscitation of 50-story towers. The rush to rebuild and re-profit would chug along with zero public input. Joining these moneygrabbers, the omnipotent New York and New Jersey Port authorities asserted their ownership of the Trade Center.

If the powerbrokers in post-calamity America prefer to continue business as usual, it is time for the rest of the population to put planning and everyday people in the process.

It is time to move and build with intelligence, not mindless aggression and institutional self-aggrandizement. It is time to consider the best fate for the sixteen-acre site for New York and the nation -- time, too, for the public and urban planners to share in re-shaping this ravaged site.

The World Trade Center was a model of the worst of its time. In an era of mega-towers wrapped with windy plazas, it was the skyscraper to end all skyscrapers. Its massive 16 acres of enclosed space and spread out towers, each covering a single acre, shadowed the city. Its random form disrupted the gridded street pattern of Lower Manhattan.

Inside, the underground mall was dark and filled with homogeneous chainstores; its corridors jammed with trainriders. Outside, widened roads and a perimeter devoid of shops or cafes created a lifeless edge: there was no sense of place. "No there there."

We can do better on this prime location. Poised above a major rail system, the site could again become a nexus, a model mini-village of 50,000. From the dark days of the national nightmare, we could create a fresh model for the nation's comeback cities.

Cities are built door by door. Some of the densest cities - Boston, Paris, and even much of New York - are seven stories high. Forget the trophy towers. Bring back the light and life of low buildings on crisscrossing blocks. Next, go for diversity. Big as they were, the towers held a fragment of the city's trade. Focussing on commerce here is not necessary for Manhattan's economic health.

Bring in the commerce but also non-profits, residences, movie houses, restaurants ... mixed-uses for a 24-hour city. Finally, remembrance is fitting. Start with a green space as a memorial to the thousands lost. Add a tower fragment, mementos, park benches and streetlights. In an asphalt jungle, visitors and citydwellers could gain relief from the tragic past.

Mere blocks from the water, today's Ground Zero could become tomorrow's civic plateau -- financially, psychologically and socially sound. Out of the ashes of the glass and concrete wasteland, this phoenix could show the world the power of a classic way of citymaking.

A condensed version of the above was heard on Living on Earth the week of October 8

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