WTC will be test for urbanism

A consensus has emerged to bring back the grid at the World Trade Center. New urban plans are the most popular in public polls. When it comes to urban design projects, the World Trade Center redevelopment may be the most significant in the US, and certainly will be the most closely watched in coming years. If public discussion about this bellwether project is any indication, new urbanists and their allies appear to have made a significant impact. Yet the outcome is far from determined. Despite widespread calls to reestablish the Manhattan street grid on the 16-acre site, only two of the initial six plans sponsored by official agencies accomplish that goal to any substantial degree. The original trade center, designed in the mid-1960s by modernist Minoru Yamasaki, could be viewed as the antithesis of New Urbanism. Nine blocks and portions of at least four streets were eliminated. There was no attempt to create a street wall, even on the perimeter of the superblock. Retail was built in the form of an underground mall. Yet the cultural winds were beginning to shift even as the WTC was designed. In 1961, Jane Jacobs published a bestselling book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which sparked greater appreciation for the value of traditional city forms. In Midtown, Penn Station was demolished in 1965, helping to launch the historic preservation movement. The new trade center may ultimately be viewed as a yardstick of just how the design and planning professions and the public have come since the 1960s in understanding what constitutes a city. PUBLIC PROCESS CHANGED One thing that has clearly changed is public process, according to Gianni Longo of American Communities Partnership of New York. In the mid-1960s, the trade center landowner, the Port Authority, could do what it wanted with little outside input, Longo points out. In 2002 that would be unthinkable. In fact, public input has been prodigious. Longo, a leader in CNU, led Imagine NY, sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society, an influential civic group. From November 2001 through April 2002, Imagine NY included 4,000 participants in 250 workshops held in many languages all over the New York metropolitan area, and culminated in 25 charrettes to gather ideas for the WTC redevelopment. Longo found an unusual level of agreement around concepts which he says are “frankly very consistent with principles of New Urbanism.” Among them: restoring the grid, building a vertical mix of uses, including street level retail, making the site pedestrian-friendly, and improving connectivity of transit systems. Following these ideas would likely result in buildings that front sidewalks, public spaces based on traditional squares and plazas, and a project that generally fits in with the surrounding urban fabric. Bringing back a true street grid was also supported by two other newly formed groups — The Civic Alliance, managed by the Regional Plan Association, and New York New Visions, a coalition of architects, planners, and landscape architects. “Reopening the grid of Manhattan would be an extraordinary gesture about the importance of the grid, which was violated by the World Trade Center,” Longo says. ON THE OTHER HAND Despite the apparent support of many New Yorkers for creating a walkable neighborhood, other forces are at work. One of the Port Authority’s leaseholders, Westfield America — which operated the hugely profitable enclosed shopping mall — does not want street-fronting retail or a grid. As for a wide mix of uses, the Authority claims that its charter does not allow it to build residential units. The Port Authority’s development “program” is to rebuild exactly what was lost — 11 million square feet of office space, and 600,000 square feet of retail. Longo believes the program should be pared down, made more diverse, and be based on new market research — not a 35-year-old development plan that created buildings that were difficult to lease for many years. The Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC) commissioned six preliminary plans for the WTC in May. Unveiled in July, four of those plans bring only Greenwich Street through the site. In other words, they still retain superblocks, albeit somewhat reduced in size from the original. They also include little street level retail, according to Steven Peterson of Peterson Littenberg Architects, hired by the LMDC to evaluate plans. Those four plans — called Memorial Plaza, Memorial Square, Memorial Triangle, and Memorial Garden — were prepared by the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, which was hired by the authority and LMDC. Two of the plans were based on prior plans by other firms. While the Port Authority and LMDC — established by the state to oversee redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after September 11 — are working together, they do not necessarily share the same goals. LMDC has been pushing for a plan with a greater mix of uses that is more connected with adjacent city streets and blocks, Peterson says. “I believe they want a 24-hour, livable, vital city to be built there.” The remaining two plans — Memorial Square and Memorial Promenade by Peterson Littenberg — reflect a significantly different approach. Multiple streets are woven through these plans, creating 10 to 12 blocks interspersed with small squares and civic spaces. The “normative blocks and streets” are designed to feature first-floor retail, says Peterson. These plans — which clearly reflect new urban principles to the greatest degree of the six — were the public favorites. Memorial Promenade came out first in polls by the New York Post and CNN (it received 44 and 34 percent of votes, respectively). That plan includes two small squares the size of the former towers, and it buries the West Side Highway, creating an esplanade connecting the trade center site to Battery Park at the tip of the island. Memorial Park, with its diagonal grid and six-acre square, came out second in the Post poll and tied for second in the CNN poll. ARCHITECTURE VERSUS URBANISM Peterson sees a conflict between architecture and urbanism over primacy in the design process. “Architecture and urbanism shouldn’t be in competition, but if you approach the problem as only an architect making a grand composition, it is very difficult to arrive at the city at the end of that process. Whereas if you start by designing the city, the public spaces, the public realm, and the urban texture first, you will get great architecture out of it, but you will have the city as its foundation.” One of those on the “architecture first” side is Herbert Muschamp, critic for the New York Times. Muschamp favors an avant-garde approach — one that is likely to produce “buildings as objects,” perhaps brilliant on their own but in conflict with one another and with the city. He is vehemently opposed to a vernacular or regional approach to architecture — one that is more likely to aim for a harmonious, well-knit cityscape in which the individual buildings are less prominent. In his reporting on WTC, Muschamp singled out New Urbanism for attack. Muschamp calls the New Urbanism “a world of topsy-turvy values, in which reactionary designs like Seaside, Florida, are described as new and innovative.” He says the Peterson Littenberg plans were based on a new urbanist “retro theme park approach,” although it is impossible to determine whether the critic was objecting to the fine grid pattern, the geometric public spaces, or some other aspect of the firm’s plans. Muschamp’s rejection of anything “retro” or “reactionary” — i.e. based on the past — represents a repudiation of Jane Jacobs and everyone who has followed in her path. He implicitly rejects the notion that observation of the city and emulation of what works makes better places, preferring instead designs based on somebody’s vision of the future. Another factor that may affect the redesign of the trade center site is the fervent desire among many of the victims’ families not to build on the footprint of the towers. The towers were poorly placed and aligned relative to connecting streets, make it difficult to reestablish a grid and preserve their footprints. The Peterson Littenberg plans encroach upon the tower footprints, for example, in order to bring additional streets through the site. As of mid-August, LMDC reportedly was preparing to issue a request for qualifications for new planning ideas for WTC. The city, meanwhile, floated the idea of a land swap with the Port Authority — offering the property under the city’s two airports in exchange for the WTC. This would give the city more control over the redevelopment process. Almost anything can happen at this point. One possibility is that the six plans could be combined or modified. Just as likely, an entirely new plan could emerge, possibly out of an international competition. The final result may or may not be of liking to new urbanists, and will be indicative of how much backing the New Urbanism enjoys in the design and planning worlds and among the general public. Longo has already perceived a significant change in community attitude. “The principles of New Urbanism are really beginning to percolate down,” he says. “People understand there are different ways to do things and some ways are better than others. People tend to favor the kind of development consistent with new urbanist principles.”