by Petra Todorovich, Associate Planner, RPA
The extraordinary coalescing of New York's civic, professional and political communities after 9/11 around a shared goal of rebuilding Lower Manhattan created great expectations for what can be achieved when the best and brightest work together for the broad public interest. From the beginning, however, this common purpose often obscured an incredibly complex web of competing interests and ambiguous authority that was divided among several public and private entities. In the glare of international attention as well as local and national political debates, could this unique planning process provide a shining example of harnessing public energy to implement an extraordinary vision for the district and the region? Unfortunately, the answer that is beginning to shape itself is a disappointing one.
After three years, and despite the tremendous amount of public attention, civic coalition building, and public agency efforts, the designs taking shape are characterized by a conventional strategy of office development and an aversion to innovation. While some broadly-supported initiatives have been achieved, principally restoring and expanding Lower Manhattan's transportation infrastructure and connections to the region, other vital objectives like implementing a unified and inventive World Trade Center master plan that serves the broad public interest are in peril.
A key obstacle is the failure to seriously consider alternatives to rebuilding all ten million square feet of office space that the two towers once held. This proposal continues to guide planning for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, despite unsupportive market conditions, lack of funding and a civic community calling for a different approach. Other civic recommendations -- to pursue polices that would support the diversification of Lower Manhattan's economy, to provide a range of housing options, and lead the city and nation in pioneering environmental sustainability and green building design -- have also largely been neglected. Unless substantial changes in direction are made soon, many of goals set after 9/11 will not be met.
This is the conclusion reached in a new report published by RPA entitled A Civic Assessment of the Lower Manhattan Planning Process. It can be seen in its entirety at www.rpa.org.
To be sure, there is no question that the public agencies leading the redevelopment efforts - the LMDC, the Port Authority, the City and State of New York, and the MTA - should be commended for their extraordinary efforts after 9/11 in the rapid recovery and restoration of essential infrastructure and services in Lower Manhattan. The restoration of disrupted subway service and the reopening of the interim PATH station in November 2003 are crowning achievements. Furthermore, the focus on expanding transportation access between Lower Manhattan and the region and commitment to numerous exciting station renovation projects should restore confidence in Lower Manhattan as a place to do business, visit, and live. The residential community, which was growing before 9/11, has continued to expand and will create a greater demand for after-hours services and amenities to make Lower Manhattan a more lively place. And the LMDC has recognized the importance of fostering arts and cultural activities in Lower Manhattan and promoting tourism, with grants to promote festivals, marketing, and specific arts and cultural projects.
Yet despite these actions, the authorities appear to be ignoring goals not directly attached to commercial success, such as pioneering sustainable design at the World Trade Center site. Similarly, the authorities are neglecting the public's call for design excellence by altering the Libeskind master plan to accommodate the widest possible office tower floor plates. The more progressive vision for Lower Manhattan advocated by the civic community - one that would promote a more diverse Lower Manhattan economy, strengthen and grow diverse residential communities and increase opportunity to a wide range of people - is not happening.
In addition to the areas outlined above, here are more specifics on how and where the rebuilding process is failing to clear the high bar of the public and the civic community's expectations:
• The latest General Project Plan for the WTC site lacks the detailed attention to the public realm of the Libeskind Master Plan, the thorough integration of memorial elements with the entire site, and sufficient detail to express a common design theme. Implementation of these essential elements will thus fall to the WTC Commercial Design Guidelines, which are being stalled by negotiations between the developer and public agencies, and have yet to be vetted with the public.
• Efforts to build Lower Manhattan's civic amenities to create a more attractive and livable community, as articulated in the Mayor's "Vision for Lower Manhattan," are lagging. While off-site planning studies to this end are underway or completed, few funds have been committed to their implementation, even as the remaining $869 million federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds are being allocated to other priorities.
• While Lower Manhattan added over 6,500 units of housing below Canal Street since the year 2000, little or none of it was affordable to low and moderate income families. The Liberty Bond program has contributed to the creation of market-rate and luxury housing, but has created no affordable housing in Lower Manhattan. Only $50 million in CDBG funds has been announced by the LMDC to create 300 units of middle-income housing in Lower Manhattan. Existing affordable housing from the Lower East Side to Chinatown to Tribeca is at risk of being lost to expiring public subsidies and gentrification pressures.
• While individual buildings on the WTC Site will meet a minimum threshold of environmentally sustainable design, they will be upstaged by other projects in the City that are demonstrating greater levels of environmental innovation and sustainability, like the Solaire building in Battery Park City and the planned Bank of America headquarters in Midtown.
In July of 2002, an extraordinary gathering of 4,500 citizens came together at "Listening to the City" to demand something more ambitious than the preliminary design options for the World Trade Center, which were all based on the Port Authority's outsized office program. The public's call to "achieve something extraordinary" at the World Trade Center site recognized that Lower Manhattan's recovery would require more than the construction of speculative office space at the World Trade Center site. Rather, a comprehensive strategy was needed to address problems that existed before 9/11 and after the tragedy. These included the financial district's dependence on the swings of Wall Street's boom and bust cycles; Lower Manhattan's inferior transportation connections to the region compared to Midtown; the relatively small residential population in the financial district and civic center and lack of related services; and a host of needed improvements to civic amenities and the public realm.
With the erosion of the World Trade Center master plan and the lack of transparency of current site planning decisions, it's hard not to conclude that the narrow interests of public authorities and private leaseholders are winning out over the broader public ones. The specific ways in which the LMDC and others can re-orient the process can be seen in the full report. The first requirement is for an actual, and not just a stated, commitment by the powers that be to both a public process and the public interest.
The extraordinary coalescing of New York's civic, professional and political communities after 9/11 around a shared goal of rebuilding Lower Manhattan created great expectations for what can be achieved when the best and brightest work together for the broad public interest. From the beginning, however, this common purpose often obscured an incredibly complex web of competing interests and ambiguous authority that was divided among several public and private entities. In the glare of international attention as well as local and national political debates, could this unique planning process provide a shining example of harnessing public energy to implement an extraordinary vision for the district and the region? Unfortunately, the answer that is beginning to shape itself is a disappointing one.
After three years, and despite the tremendous amount of public attention, civic coalition building, and public agency efforts, the designs taking shape are characterized by a conventional strategy of office development and an aversion to innovation. While some broadly-supported initiatives have been achieved, principally restoring and expanding Lower Manhattan's transportation infrastructure and connections to the region, other vital objectives like implementing a unified and inventive World Trade Center master plan that serves the broad public interest are in peril.
A key obstacle is the failure to seriously consider alternatives to rebuilding all ten million square feet of office space that the two towers once held. This proposal continues to guide planning for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, despite unsupportive market conditions, lack of funding and a civic community calling for a different approach. Other civic recommendations -- to pursue polices that would support the diversification of Lower Manhattan's economy, to provide a range of housing options, and lead the city and nation in pioneering environmental sustainability and green building design -- have also largely been neglected. Unless substantial changes in direction are made soon, many of goals set after 9/11 will not be met.
This is the conclusion reached in a new report published by RPA entitled A Civic Assessment of the Lower Manhattan Planning Process. It can be seen in its entirety at www.rpa.org.
To be sure, there is no question that the public agencies leading the redevelopment efforts - the LMDC, the Port Authority, the City and State of New York, and the MTA - should be commended for their extraordinary efforts after 9/11 in the rapid recovery and restoration of essential infrastructure and services in Lower Manhattan. The restoration of disrupted subway service and the reopening of the interim PATH station in November 2003 are crowning achievements. Furthermore, the focus on expanding transportation access between Lower Manhattan and the region and commitment to numerous exciting station renovation projects should restore confidence in Lower Manhattan as a place to do business, visit, and live. The residential community, which was growing before 9/11, has continued to expand and will create a greater demand for after-hours services and amenities to make Lower Manhattan a more lively place. And the LMDC has recognized the importance of fostering arts and cultural activities in Lower Manhattan and promoting tourism, with grants to promote festivals, marketing, and specific arts and cultural projects.
Yet despite these actions, the authorities appear to be ignoring goals not directly attached to commercial success, such as pioneering sustainable design at the World Trade Center site. Similarly, the authorities are neglecting the public's call for design excellence by altering the Libeskind master plan to accommodate the widest possible office tower floor plates. The more progressive vision for Lower Manhattan advocated by the civic community - one that would promote a more diverse Lower Manhattan economy, strengthen and grow diverse residential communities and increase opportunity to a wide range of people - is not happening.
In addition to the areas outlined above, here are more specifics on how and where the rebuilding process is failing to clear the high bar of the public and the civic community's expectations:
• The latest General Project Plan for the WTC site lacks the detailed attention to the public realm of the Libeskind Master Plan, the thorough integration of memorial elements with the entire site, and sufficient detail to express a common design theme. Implementation of these essential elements will thus fall to the WTC Commercial Design Guidelines, which are being stalled by negotiations between the developer and public agencies, and have yet to be vetted with the public.
• Efforts to build Lower Manhattan's civic amenities to create a more attractive and livable community, as articulated in the Mayor's "Vision for Lower Manhattan," are lagging. While off-site planning studies to this end are underway or completed, few funds have been committed to their implementation, even as the remaining $869 million federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds are being allocated to other priorities.
• While Lower Manhattan added over 6,500 units of housing below Canal Street since the year 2000, little or none of it was affordable to low and moderate income families. The Liberty Bond program has contributed to the creation of market-rate and luxury housing, but has created no affordable housing in Lower Manhattan. Only $50 million in CDBG funds has been announced by the LMDC to create 300 units of middle-income housing in Lower Manhattan. Existing affordable housing from the Lower East Side to Chinatown to Tribeca is at risk of being lost to expiring public subsidies and gentrification pressures.
• While individual buildings on the WTC Site will meet a minimum threshold of environmentally sustainable design, they will be upstaged by other projects in the City that are demonstrating greater levels of environmental innovation and sustainability, like the Solaire building in Battery Park City and the planned Bank of America headquarters in Midtown.
In July of 2002, an extraordinary gathering of 4,500 citizens came together at "Listening to the City" to demand something more ambitious than the preliminary design options for the World Trade Center, which were all based on the Port Authority's outsized office program. The public's call to "achieve something extraordinary" at the World Trade Center site recognized that Lower Manhattan's recovery would require more than the construction of speculative office space at the World Trade Center site. Rather, a comprehensive strategy was needed to address problems that existed before 9/11 and after the tragedy. These included the financial district's dependence on the swings of Wall Street's boom and bust cycles; Lower Manhattan's inferior transportation connections to the region compared to Midtown; the relatively small residential population in the financial district and civic center and lack of related services; and a host of needed improvements to civic amenities and the public realm.
With the erosion of the World Trade Center master plan and the lack of transparency of current site planning decisions, it's hard not to conclude that the narrow interests of public authorities and private leaseholders are winning out over the broader public ones. The specific ways in which the LMDC and others can re-orient the process can be seen in the full report. The first requirement is for an actual, and not just a stated, commitment by the powers that be to both a public process and the public interest.
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