On this anniversary of that horrible morning six years ago, perhaps we are starting to see some good rising from the ashes. The southern part of the island of Manhattan, which used to turn into a ghost town after work, is starting to take on some of the characteristics of many of the other neighborhoods in New York City -- what University of Michigan architecture and urban design professor Christopher B. Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism":
From an urban planning point of view it means a place where, within a quarter- to half-mile radius, you can get pretty much everything you need and maybe even walk to work.
According to the New York Times, the financial district is becoming home to a considerable residential population -- albeit tilted toward the wealthy -- but this permanent population enriches many other aspects of the area:
Optimism abounds now among developers and merchants, who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into real estate along the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan. They are counting on the district, in its next incarnation, to be not just a collection of office towers and trading floors, but also a self-sustaining residential neighborhood that will appeal to families.
Back before the World Trade Center was built starting in the late 1960s, the area where it stood was known as an electronics district -- my dad used to go there in the 1930s to find parts for radios. The first retail television set was sold there.
The Twin Towers were not a good addition to the financial district from a livability point of view; one of the main goals of the reconstruction there has been to "recreate the grid"; that is, the various smaller blocks that used to be there, the kind that make up the vibrant street life that Jane Jacobs first discussed in her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
And how did this revival come about? It is quite possible that it would not have happened, or at least not at the level now seen, without some considerable governmental assistance. According to the N.Y. Times:
The rebound is a testament to the healing power of billions of dollars in government aid, like the federal Liberty Bond program, which provided more than $6 billion in tax-exempt financing for reconstruction downtown, as well as various rent and wage subsidies from redevelopment agencies.
The horror of 9/11 was so great that talk of letting the market handle the problem was not seriously considered. With the government stepping in to first create the infrastructure and residential community, the market is now able to take over and help grow a self-sustaining process.
Might the reconstruction of Ground Zero have some positive lessons for the whole planet?
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Comments
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Sean Casten Posted 3:36 am
11 Sep 2007
As development ideals shifted from Robert Moses towards Jane Jacobs, there were many folks who lamented what the WTC had done to the city long before 9/11. It strikes me that the rebuild in NYC to make lower Manhattan look like the rest of the city is therefore probably a manifestation of longer-term trends in the urban planning rather than any specific post-9/11 decision. Which is not to diminish the importance of those decisions, but simply a reflection of the fact that those decisions probably weren't politically possible 20 years ago.
Good post.
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jimpharo Posted 5:38 am
11 Sep 2007
What's being re-built is nothing like what's described. Try buying groceries, going to a movie, dropping off your laundry or taking out a library book.
This is a myth. What's being built in lower Manhattan is basically downtown Newark, J, which is essentially a horizontal office park.
Sure, there's a surge in very-high-end housing, and a new Chanel store, but this neighborhood is following all the bad design principles cities have foolishly followed for the last 50 years: open "plazas" no one will use; non-existent or inaccessable street-level retail walls; huge traffic thoroughfares at street level slicing things up; and an excess of "dead" zones (i.e., areas that are not conducive to actice street life, which was Jacobs' great insight), to wit, about a dozen memorials (WTC, Irish Famine, Vietnam Vets, Holocaust, 3/4 of Battery Park (WWII Airmen, Merchant Marine, Coast Guard, Korean War Vets, etc.)
Tourists will be the main population after office workers, and they'll sheepishly follow the signs for where they are supposed to go. But they will have no sense of the urban environment that thrives elsewhere in NYC, and that once upon a time, before Austin Tobin (sp?) and David Rockefeller, flourished here.
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 6:04 am
11 Sep 2007
the rebuild in NYC to make lower Manhattan look like the rest of the city is therefore probably a manifestation of longer-term trends in the urban planning
It would be nice if that were true, but I don't think it's time for urban advocates to be declaring victory and resting on their laurels. The rebuilt WTC won't be any better than the Avenue of the Americas in terms of walkability; the blank glassy facades, superblocks and windswept plazas of the original WTC will live on in the new plan. The base of the Freedom Tower in particular will be as deadening to street life as any suburban self-storage warehouse.
And over in Brooklyn, local activists are battling the megastructures and car-oriented plans for Atlantic Yards.
Some of the credit for restoring vitality and street life to Lower Manhattan should go to NYC Department of City Planning Chairman Amanda Burden, who has steadfastly maintained the importance of streets as places where civic life flourishes:
I firmly believe in the principles articulated by Holly Whyte that the street is the barometer of the health of city life, and that every new development must connect with the street to ensure its vitality.
Ped Shed Blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:59 am
11 Sep 2007
If downtown NYC was going to stay the way you describe, yes, that would be pretty far from a Jane-Jacobs-walkable-urbanity model. But if you watch the video,, Leinberger (fortunately) has an interesting analysis of the process of how areas become walkable. According to him, actually, first often comes entertainment (I guess that's what Newark is trying to do), but the restaurants hightlighted in the NYTimes article serve a similar purpose for downtown NYC. Next comes residential housing -- first rental, then sales -- which is the main activity going on downtown. Only then will good retail come, and he specifically mentions grocery stores, which I think are absolutely critical to making a neighborhood walkable.
So hopefully, the retail will come. Having lived in NYC (upper west side, very walkable) for over 20 years before moving to Evanston Illinois (virtually Leinberger's definition of walkability), I agree that downtown NYC has certainly been a mess. I can also believe that much of it may be redeveloped badly. But besides Leinberger's prognosis, I also know that tribeca -- which "officially" starts above Chambers Street -- is in pretty good shape, with grocery stores, movie theaters, etc., and I hope that that area starts to move into downtown from the north as well.
So I suppose the jury is still out, and we will have to see how downtown progresses. It will also be interesting to see what happens when the transit center is finished at the WTC site, and indeed, how the whole ground zero turns out -- I am still under the impression, freedom tower bunker and all, that there will be an attempt to correct some of the mistakes that Rockefeller et al. committed.
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