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The planning--or lack of it--behind the rebirth of our city's storied skyline.
By Susan S. Szenasy
Editor In Chief
October 2002
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Peter B. Kaplan/Contact Press Images
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My mailbox is known for being among the most overburdened ones in our office;
some days it looks like a file folder on steroids. So in late July,
no one noticed the most recent flurry of papers, a deluge of proposals
for rebuilding the World Trade Center site. This postal frenzy--my electronic
mailbox grew just as crowded--was in response to a July 23rd Op-Ed piece
I wrote for the New York Times. Its editor encouraged me to voice
my dismay over the six lackluster plans released a week earlier by the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey (LMDC/PA). The public revolt against those plans has become a
legend by now, but at that time my outrage was still news.
After the Times hit the newsstands and the proposals started to arrive,
one disturbing question kept vibrating in my brain: Are designers ready
for the coming public debate on issues that touch our lives? As the twenty-first
century takes on ever more global contours and new technological, environmental,
and behavioral issues present themselves in rapid succession, we look for
enlightenment from those among us who possess specialized knowledge. Architects
and planners, for instance, can help us understand new urban forms. They
know how buildings relate to the natural environment and to the public;
how transportation systems can benefit a region; how technology can
be used to create safe places; and a myriad of other quality-of-life issues.
But if the contents of my mail boxes are any indication, our designers may
not be prepared to enter the new public dialogue.
Proposals came to me from architects, artists, scholars, an environmentalist,
a book publisher, and ordinary citizens. The architects, as expected, drew
their ideas as seductive forms. And while each one was more sensitive to
people's needs than the LMDC/PA's simplistic commercial-development proposals
were, all had one shocking feature in common. None of the architects seemed
to remember that the basis of design--any design--is solid research and
analysis. This leads me to ask why so many designers are willing to create
forms without a plan. Is this urge to draw stronger than the need to understand?
Or is drawing confused with understanding? Are we pushing designers--as
the LMDC/PA's designers seem to have been pushed--to give form prematurely?
The basis of a plan that serves the ultimate client--the people who use
it--is thorough research and careful analysis. This may be intuitive, observational,
experiential, or statistical research, or better yet, all four. If there
was ever an argument for such an approach, it was those six dreary LMDC/PA
plans. Their inadequacy--and the inadequacy of the firms that drew
them up--was blasted worldwide by the media. While the civic groups that
formed after 9/11 were feeding the LMDC useful information on everything
from mixed-use to sustainability to multicentered cities to transportation
hubs and managed streets, all this input was ignored by the planners. Instead,
they concentrated on the client's need for square footage. But it became
very clear, very quickly, that such simple statistics are not sufficient
to understand the complexities of developing 16 acres of empty space bordered
by existing neighborhoods and the scene of a national tragedy.
What cheered me up finally is reading the issue you hold in your hands.
It reaffirms my long-held belief that designers and planners can accommodate
public need while serving client greed. They show us that it's possible
to make mixed-use central to humane urban development, as Portland did by
building residences above its public library. That it's desirable for generations
to mix, as they so creatively do in an Oklahoma elder-care facility. And
that truly good things can happen when designers like IDEO use intuitive
and observational research to create new programs for hospitals, thereby
changing a moribund health-care system.
So while the contents of my mailboxes may have depressed me, reading this
issue encouraged me to believe in the power of design and designers. And
so I ask what wonderful things could happen in New York City if some of
these talented people were called in to examine the existing conditions
at the tip of our photogenic--but distressed--island city? They were drawn
here before 9/11 by our movie-star skyline, by our lively streets, by our
many excellent cultural institutions. And after last September, people everywhere
became New Yorkers. The designers among them want to help us became the
great twenty-first-century metropolis we deserve to be. Let's ask for
their help.
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