New Urbanist Proposals For Rebuilding The World Trade Center

Introduction

The New Urbanism is a movement that seeks to reconfigure sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts and conserve natural environments. Many of the people who are a part of this movement engage in a discussion group (The New Urbanism) using email. The members of this email group include architects, town planners, developers, members of the academic community and citizens. Since the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, the members of this group have engaged in a lively debate about several new urbanist proposals for redeveloping the site of the World Trade Center.

Street-Friendly Neighborhood And Tower
By Michael Mehaffy, Project Manager, Urban Designer and Development Consultant, Portland, OR

I am reminded of the symbolic verticality of those buildings, if not their natural beauty. I am not generally a fan of skyscrapers, as I think they are unhelpful to the essential task of knitting the life of a place together with its streets. But in this case I suggest we recognize that there is likely to be unstoppable political demand for rebuilding some defiantly soaring vertical element. (I just heard an impassioned call on CNN to rebuild them exactly.) "

I suggest we consider rebuilding the WTC district as a dense street-friendly neighborhood, with stepped-back terrace buildings and comparably high FARs. (The current plan has a lot of dysfunctional "plaza" space, after all.) One -- or perhaps two, or even three, Petronas-style? -- of those structures could be very tall, relatively slender and graceful elements, not intended to cram the maximum number of bodies into an economic shoebox, but serving the function of beautiful symbolic and commemorative elements. Hell, they could even decide to make it the tallest building in the world. Again.

Yes, I know this seems to be new urbanist apostasy. But consider the opportunity, the chance to advance the model even as we make the point that towers are OK in certain situations (San Gimignano? Paris?) provided they are respectful of the street and servant to the life of the larger city. That would be a departure indeed from practices of the past fifty years -- practices that reached their culmination in the old WTC. Say what you will about the Petronas Towers -- but I would argue they are, at least, much more graceful and beautiful external forms than the WTC.

Streetscape with Memorial
By Laurence Aurbach Jr., Assistant Editor, The Town Paper, Gaithersburg, MD

Some kind of memorial is required, yet the area shouldn't become a giant mausoleum, either. The best memorial would be a regular, bustling financial district streetscape. That would really signify that life goes on regardless.

The idea of rebuilding the twin towers has an element of denial to it, a wanting to restore the skyline as if nothing had happened. Mehaffy's idea of a memorial spire is a fine concept. The memorial must take a rightful place in the NYC skyline, visible as the twin towers were before. It's not new urbanist apostasy at all, rather it is an appropriate response to context, tradition (of New York) and cultural circumstance. A functioning, human-scale streetscape at the base is, of course, central to its success as an new urbanist proposal.

Some people, including some prominent architects, are suggesting the WTC site should be left as is. Many people felt the same way when it came time to memorialize Antietam. That battlefield is now the site of the second bloodiest day in America. The fields and trees are maintained exactly as they were on the days of battle. There is a Park Service interpretive center. A few stone memorials lie scattered about. Basically, the place is a vast graveyard with no headstones.

Is that the best fate for lower Manhattan? I think to leave the area a desolate scar would be succumbing to the terrorists' wishes. We would be saying that our sorrow is so great that we cannot resume normal life at that spot. If that is true, then desolation is a fitting reminder. But if we have the fortitude to rise from those ashes, then a living streetscape with an integrated memorial is the better option.

School
Patrick Condon, UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments, Vancouver, B.C.

Oklahoma City Memorial. (Select image for full-size) Source: Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The Oklahoma memorial is a nice thing, but is it not also a memorial to the power of terror?

I have said it before and will say it again. The site should be used for a school. This school could certainly effectively use the two-acre site. It could include community functions of theater and other community services. It should be a place where the terror is exorcised by the songs of children at play. Each morning in September, when the sun shines from over the Statue of Liberty, their voices would constitute the most suitable, respectful, and sublime memorial for these lost lives.

From the perspective of our concerns (urbanism), such a development would also mark a key shift in orientation in city design. Away from gestures of world power like the Trade Center, towards gestures of faith in the future as embodied in our children.

Restore The Original Lower Manhattan Street Grid
By Payton Chung, Urban Development Research Assistant, Metropolitan Planning Council, Chicago, IL (Copyleft 2001 Payton Chung)

Overview of World Trade Center site and damage. (Select image for full-size) Source: Skyscrapers.com

The question of rebuilding isn't a zero-sum game: Although rebuilding on the site of the towers themselves would, indeed, be unthinkably callous, much of the World Trade Center site remains untainted by spilled blood. Before the WTC was built, its fourteen-acre site appears to have been divided into twelve blocks (a grid three blocks E-W and four blocks N-S), consolidated into one superblock by the WTC. (7 WTC was built on a block north of the superblock and "annexed" into the complex.)

I'm an unabashed fan of the Lower Manhattan street grid; once you get used to it, it's not nearly as disorienting as it first looks, and its short blocks and gentle curves offer far more variety and interest than the Midtown grid. The rebuilding should begin by restoring this historic grid.

Six of those pre-WTC blocks could be restored by extending Greenwich (from the corner of West Broadway and Vesey) and Washington through the site NW-SE and Fulton, Dey, and Cortlandt through to Greenwich E-W. The site of 7 WTC could be returned to the street grid. Those sites can house new, mixed-use buildings of a size appropriate to Lower Manhattan. The six-block, roughly six-acre area between West, Greenwich, Fulton, and Liberty contains the remains of buildings 1, 2, and 3 (the towers and the hotel) and should remain as a memorial -- though its design should certainly be thought through carefully, to avoid a re-creation of WTC's existing (and almost universally avoided) seven-acre plaza.

The debris from this site can be reused as landfill for new parks and gardens; the charred remains of Chicago after its '87 Great Fire were pushed into the lake, creating Grant Park. Just across the East and Hudson rivers, and on Manhattan's Far West Side, are hundreds of acres of underutilized land, and along both of those rivers are hundreds of underutilized piers. Capital from the rebuilding effort could be used to build on "new" land, either new landfill (a la Battery Park City, which was built on fill from when WTC was built the first time) or land adjacent to the urban core but connected by new ferries, bridges, or rail lines.

Imagine what five or ten million square feet of new offices could do to jump-start redevelopment in downtown Brooklyn or Queens West/Long Island City, or keep Jersey City growing. Indeed, Merrill Lynch and American Express are both looking to rebuild some of their offices in Brooklyn or Jersey City, thereby keeping employment in the New York region's central core but also spreading the activity around. Rebuilding at a less heroic scale would also reduce construction costs, since costs escalate exponentially (but returns only arithmetically) above fifty floors or so. The savings could be used to build new housing or parks or schools or whatever the city needs.

Urban life and activity must not be spread too thin, though, because in so doing one undermines the very existence of the city. Leaving the site as a vacant, fourteen-acre hole in the urban fabric of Lower Manhattan would do much to destroy the vitality of the city (especially the financial district) in the long run -- and thereby concede victory to the terrorists in a roundabout way. The city must rebuild, but it must do so in a holistic way that will leave the city stronger, more capable, and more vibrant than before.

An Outdoor Room
By Ed Brenegar, Consultant/Facilitator for leadership development and organizational community and Columnist, Asheville, NC

The image I have is of an outdoor room that invites people in. One of the products of this disaster is the expression of unity that is experienced by people. It isn't some forced politically correct abstract unity, but a real unity of citizens who are sharing one another's pain and anger. So, I'd resist making it some memorial that only promotes a morbid remembrance of last week. Rather, it should celebrate the heroism and sacrifice of the citizens of New York and America.

Extend The Grid, Mixed Use Development
By Douglas Duany, Landscape Architect and Consultant, Miami, FL

Economic trends support Chung's proposal, as Wall Street was already relocating before this unfortunate tragedy. I know enough of the problems of Wall Street overconcentration to know that it must be mixed use (to give a clue, the concentration of wealth and people fielded pathetically few restaurants, in NYC!).

I would maintain the only the actual floorplate of the towers should be maintained as plazas, even though this may distort the reconstruction of the grid. I would consider locating any memorial to the new landfill, as this follows Asplundh's and Lewerentz's setting up an open horizon as reconciliation with death, but this is part of a careful drawing exercise. Maya Lin's masterpiece is not functionally canonic, it was the result of a chthonic dream vision -- a one shot.

I'm not on the ground, and we need continued feedback from people who have a good "grip." But on a quick take I would consider extending the new office space in a mixed use framework directly across the Brooklyn Bridge, to the docks under Brooklyn Heights and to the industrial area immediately north of the bridge.

For longer range planning, I would also consider extending the perimeter of true urban redevelopment further north, to the areas of Brooklyn around the Manhattan Bridge. And on the Manhattan side, I would consider crossing the moat of bureaucratic buildings downtown, something that would allow a reworking of the housing projects that destroyed the neighborhoods of the great bulge of the Lower East Side.

We should not hesitate to look at historical patterns as an inspiration. Ferries as abundant as the XIX century and the current pedestrian access will bridge the river. Tight ferrying to the New Jersey shore can be also be a component. At stake is the city of the 21st century.

What is your idea for redeveloping the site of the former World Trade Center?