WTC Site Offers A Lesson For City Planners

When the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation releases its six contending proposals for the WTC site on Tuesday, they will reflect not only an intense debate over the future of downtown Manhattan, but what a modern city should be. "The essence of the debate goes back decades: whether cities should be dominated by towering projects or human-scale street life. The issue now is whether the planners should restore the street grid that the World Trade Center's 16-acre plaza tore apart 30 years ago or whether they should keep the area a plaza, set apart from the city's roar...Most people who think about cities agree that the original design of the World Trade Center was a big mistake. They are pained by its destruction - the loss of life, the shattering of security, the gaping hole in the skyline. But in retrospect, many wish it had never been built."

Thanks to Christian Peralta