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 In the rush to rebuild, can advocates of sustainable urbanism get a hearing? December 2001
This morning as I listen, sobbing, to strangers sending out their pathetic distress signals, I feel connected to them. Recalling what we witnessed that day, I find their desperation real and forever haunting. Now, in addition to its enormous scale and mechanical drama, the collapse also has a voice--strong and brave and precise. And so the inevitable question arises: How do we, the survivors and bystanders, honor those cries? How do we find our own voices and give them meaning? It's been hard not to feel mute and defeated and insignificant living inside the whirlwind of rumors, facts, and events that tear through the city each day. Bomb scares. Sirens. Avarice. Impatience. Even before "the missing" were pronounced "the dead," a TV reporter talked about the $100 billion needed to bring New York back. On October 2 Gridsite.com reports what sounds like a done deal between Silverstein Properties (the leaseholder of the twin towers and other real estate at the World Trade Center) and the local architecture firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Cooper Robertson Architects. Larry Silverstein promises us "something of spectacular beauty--something that again will become the icon of New York and serve as the economic generator of activity of the financial district and [honor] the 6,000 lives lost and the courage of those who came to help." Although Silverstein's desire to rebuild is admirable, his haste is not. It has become impossible to conduct business as usual, especially in urban redevelopment. The world now has a connection to that site. It has acquired a kind of spiritual eminent domain in which every New Yorker--if not every U.S. citizen and person everywhere--feels a profound connection to its future. On the same day, crammed into the small, hot conference room at the Guggenheim Soho, 30 of us struggle to find our collective voice. We're all die-hard New Yorkers: business people, architects, designers, citizens. Among us are representatives from the Manhattan Borough President's Office, Community Boards 1 and 2, New York City Partnership, Alliance for Downtown New York, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York League of Conservation Voters, Earth Pledge Foundation, Municipal Art Society, New York Hall of Science, American Institute of Architects, Guggenheim Foundation, Architecture Research Institute, and Metropolis. We eventually decide to call ourselves the 21st-Century Building and Action Coalition. Different disciplines and skills, we tell ourselves, are needed to figure out what shape the twenty-first-century city might take. We're asking questions. We're not ready to make proposals. We hope to draw up a list of ideas about human needs. We're certain that these needs are different today than when the towers were built 30 years ago. So we ask: How do people live and work? How has our new relationship with technology changed the daily patterns of urban life? How do we integrate sustainability, history, and technology into our new city forms? Can we have a city less dependent on cars? How can art, memory, spirituality, health, and education get a hearing in the rush to reinvigorate the economy? How do our voices get heard? We work to hear each other over the jackhammers outside. Annoying though this familiar noise is, someone from downtown says she's nostalgic for it and wishes it was still part of her now bombed-out neighborhood. One gentle voice starts defining what I see as our new direction. It belongs to a young man, an architect. Rafael Pelli, of Cesar Pelli & Associates, the firm that designed the World Financial Center, believes that today we have the technology to make buildings much more energy efficient than they are. We need to start looking at the city not as individual buildings but as a collection of "buildings that are consumers of air, water, and power," he says. "Everyone in New York understands how a street has to work, how public spaces have to work." But it's harder to understand sustainable design, which is pretty much, Pelli adds, "still in formation, like a research project." What developer, we wonder, has patience to experiment when "economic generators" are called for? And yet what developer can afford to ignore the environmental consequences of its real estate projects? Though puzzled and somewhat dismayed, we make plans and set the date for our next meeting. We know that if we are to become effective advocates for an environmentally sensitive and human city, we must find our own strong and brave and precise voice. That brutal pile of rubble, that obscene hole in the ground, and that lingering cloud of smoke urge us to try. It's the least we can do for those thousands whose lives we watched turn to dust. Send your ideas about the future of the World Trade Center site to talk2us@metropolismag.com. |
