DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Architects, Planners and Residents Wonder How to Fill the Hole in the City By KIRK JOHNSON ing at the site — are coming into place, Most experts on the downtown ; and CHARLES V. BAGLI development experts say. And here, too, the economy agree that simply replac- questions are many and difficult. mg lost office space with new build­ The destruction of the World Trade Cen­ Is the World Trade Center site still purely ings would be a pallid response to the ter on Sept. 11 cut aJiuge hole in the fabric of disaster, and that the opportunity New York City. But already, even as the a place of trade and business, as that part of must be seized to rethink the city’s grief and mourning go on, the city’s wound Manhattan has been since the 1600’s, or does needs, from transportation to new is becoming a kind of repository of ideas it now belong, in a way, to the world — or to work and life patterns, modem tele­ about what the site, and the city around it, the families of the victims in the disaster — communications and, of course, the should become. with new obligations about what happens threat of global- terrorism. Proposals range from the grandiose and there? How should New York, in thinking The trade towers, they say, were ambitious to the small and intimate. Some about what is to come, weigh the needs of its conceived in tJife 196O’s in an era of business leaders argue for a crash-course businesses and residents alongside the glob­ moon shots and urban renewal. The Eonstruction project that would replace lost al statement that redevelopment will make city has moved- on. office space for corporations displaced by about New York in the 21st century? “This tragedy has given us an op­ ■ fte disaster. Others say rebuilding at the Underlying all those questions is one that portunity to rethink and rebuild all of Jrade center site must be sensitive, above millions of people are also asking them­ Lower Manhattan,” said John E. selves: What kind of city is New York now, Zuccotti, a former city planning all else, to the human losses, with a memori­ in the aftermath of the attacks? chairman and deputy mayor who al incorporated as part of the very essence “We’re going to have to invenUsomething heads the company that owns the of the design. World Financial Center near the But. there is nearly universal agreement entirely new here, and it’s going to mean rethinkihg the ways we use the trade center site. But it wiU take, he among people in fields as diverse as eco­ added, “political leadership, compro­ nomics, urban planning, security and ethics city,” said Richard Sennett, a sociol­ that New York is about to encounter a ogist and Manhattan resident who is mise, planning andpublicrprivate co­ question that few great cities have ever also the chairman of the Cities Pro­ operation-ata pace unprecedentedin faced: What is to be done with an immense­ gram, an urban design program at the history of the city and state.” ly valuable piece of land that is crucial to the London School of Economics. One,major element of that retiiink- the local economy, but which has also be­ The still-evolving ideas about the ing centers ph/Lower Manhattah’s come- hugely important — indeed almost trade center range from the immedi­ transportation needs. spiritual — to people in New York and ate and concrete to the long-term Many developers, for example, are around the world? and conceptual. One plan being arguing for a new rail link as part of One idea put forward in recent days would pushed by the former president of the redevelopment, one that Would make the trade center site a new home for the State Urban Development Corpo­ allow Long Island . Rail Road com­ that ultimate Wall Street symbol, the New ration, Richard A. Kahan, would muters to come all the way into combine a new home for the New Lower Manhattan. Other tran^rta- York Stock Exchange, a home that could York Stock Exchange with a major tion proposals include an extension also include the American Stock Exchange cultural element, perhaps a big part of the PATH traln system from New and Nasdaq. Another developer has pro­ of the Guggenheim Museum. The Jersey-sq that it could connect wlth posed a ring of 50-story towers. Urban plan­ combination, he argues, would ac­ the No. 4 and S lines of the New York ners and economic development experts say knowledge and capture the broader City subway at Fulton Street, and an that improving transportation to downtown, place that downtown has become. extension of the No. 7 subway . line by adding rail connections, should be a Professor Sennett and others say from 42nd Street farther south to priority. that a memorial to the victims must 31st Street pr beyond to encourage But for now, every idea is just that — be the first element on the drawing the development of Manhattan’s words and arguments. The architects, plan­ board, and that the commercial use West Side north of the trade ceiiter. ners, builders and corporate executives who should then be adapted to that vision. Many planners and developers have put out proposals have done so almost The transformed human meaning of also say that Battery Park City, into thin air. No process exists yet to act on the World Trade Center site, they which has given Lower Manhattan a any because the machinery to begin even say, has become the driving force. residential element it did not have 30 sorting through the ideas has yet to be built, Some people are arguing for an years ago when the. trade towers and state and city officials have differing . were l>uUt, ,-^ould , Jto incorporated notions of how much control each will bring international design competition that would produce something emblemat­ into a/n^w id^i^. ©he proposal in­ ic of a global city. Others favor an cludes taking a stretch of West emphasis on local ideas to embody Street, a bu^,thoroughfare that now Visions for land that is New York at its most distinctive.- separates Battery Park from the In order to get going on the re­ trade center site, and putting it un- both immensely valuable thinking and rebuilding, some have derground, creating a' kind of mail called for the creation of a powerful effect that would give the new site a and newly spiritual. new government agency led by the great-humanaccessibllity. state that could cut through the ordi­ nary approvals system and expedite to bear on what is conceived, and then built. the redevelopment; others contend But the framework for that process — the different sorts of intellectual and emotional that the wounds of the disaster are so deep that a broad conceptual effort W4Ti-fn2S components that will be involved in rebuild­ giving a say to city residents and the families of victims, even if it slows down the rebuilding process, must be A 36-0) a priority.

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