So, what do you think should be done with the World Trade Center site?  
Redevelop it?  Turn it into a park?  Erect a monument?

51 responses total.

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The World Trade Center towers *did* implode into themselves.

My first thought is that they should rebuild them, with design 
modifications to make them more resistant to damage than before.  I 
think it would be a shame if the site just became a park or some huge 
gaudy memorial.  OTOH if the towers were rebuilt, then would there be 
enough tenants?  Personally, I think would have a lot of anxiety about 
even walking into the building, but then I am that kind of person.

I heard on NPR 5/30 that the man who owned the Windows(?) on the 107th 
floor of tower A wants to move back in if they are rebuilt.  I guess 
there will be others, but I think it would trigger a whole new wave of 
post traumatic stress problems for NYC.  

They should not be built exactly as they were.  They should be built stronger,
taller, an more energy efficient. New safety features should be built in so
people will not be trapped in an emergency.

Learn from the failure adn rebuild.  There should still be room at teh base
for a large memorial park to be built as well.

They started prepping for rebuilding on the site a while back, even 
before the cleanup was finished.  They haven't decided what, exactly, 
they're planning to build yet, except to say that it won't be WTC2 (the 
original version wasn't particularly profitable), and it will include 
some sort of memorial.  Final plans are due by the end of the year.

I can't imagine thinking any city skyline has "charisma": a lot of big
boxes. If any skyline has "charisma" it is a mountain or other natural
feature. There were a lot of buildings creating at least a "cityscape"
(without charisma) before, and all the WTC was mess it up more. They
were out of proportion among the other boxes. I don't think any artistic
sense was used in their construction.

Yes, I believe you are right, they were a government project.

I agree that the Trade Center had no charisma.  But come on, Rane -- if the
Empire State Building leaves you cold, you're missing out.

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i miss the skyline, sure. i think no matter *what* they build, it's not really
going to withstand an airplane crashing right into it. they've mentioned
moving the UN to the location, but it doesn;t have a lot of support.

i was down at the site the other day, and it's really HUGE. ...whole lot of
shit is missing - more than i thought. it was weird. so i think they could
really build a variety of different things there - i don't see why it has to
be one big project. i have ideas, but there's no way in hell they'd happen.

9 slipped. let me put it this way: when i looked out my window and there was
no WTC, i was angry at american foreign policy and the fucked up mess that's
been going on in the rest of the world who's ass we've been raping for quite
sometime, making tons of enemies with the ignorant supprt of our citizens.
i knew it would mean war, i knew it would mean a loss of the rights of
americans and immigrants, as well as a move towards a police state so easily
while everybody's waving their stupid flags. so, i would like to see more
projects based on informing the public, spreading diverse cultural and
political knowledge somehow. but that's not really beneficial to the powers
that be, now is it.

I think a subway station might be a good start.

they, like, already have one of those, dewd.

They've already replaced the one that was under WTC?

maybe richard knows better than i, but i think i've taken all the trains that
go through there, and the only thing i've noticed is the WTC/Cortland st stop
that was damaged has been fixed, although the trains go through the station
without stopping. 

One of the projects being considered is essentially a Seattle tower.  It
would stand taller than the towers did, include all the necessary
communications antennas, have an observations deck, and not much else. 
From the picture I saw it had a splendid design, more like sculpture than
building. 

The funny thing is, from what I've heard, no one *liked* the WTC when it
went up.  It was seen as out of balance with all the buildings around it,
and evidence of the Port Authority's conceit and ability to ignore building
codes.  It was widely considered a firetrap. Given that history, it's funny
to see people waxing nostalgic about the WTC towers and talking about a hole
in the skyline now.  They were ugly buildings, and the fact that they were
destroyed in a horrible way doesn't really change that.

I guess it's all about what people are used to, but I wouldn't want to see
an identical-looking structure replace them.

Re #16: That Seattle tower is called the "Space Needle".  (A friend of mine
from out there was surprised I'd heard of it.)


One thing we may have to consider is that possibly we're just building too
big.  Is there any real reason we need to have buildings that tall, other
than to show off?  The history of fires and accidents in skyscrapers is not
an encouraging one -- it's starting to look like there is no way to evacuate
a tall, skinny building effectively, and they're all basically firetraps.

"But the [WTC] buildings remain an occasion to mourn: they never should 
have happened, they were never really needed, and if they say anything 
at all about our city, it is that we retreat into banality when the 
oppurtunity comes for greatness."  -- Paul Goldberger, NYTimes 
architecure critic, in his book _The City Observed: New York_, Random 
House, 1979.  

Nobody had anything good to say about the WTC when it was first built.  
People got used to it.  A entire generation never knew the pre-WTC 
skyline except in pictures, and many of them no doubt feel nostalgia 
for the buildings now that they're gone.  But Goldberger's comments 
still stand, like it or not.

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i never liked them either, but when you live here, you just get used to them
without realizing it. you see them from everywhere in a place where there are
so many buildings you often can't see past a couple of blocks.

we all aim our antennae toward the empire state building now.

<retreats into her shell>

I thought the World Trade Center was beautiful.  I've only visited 
Manhattan once, but will always remember seeing the two towers jutting 
out above the rest of the city as I rode on the Staten Island ferry 
past the Statue of Liberty, out to Staten Island and then back into 
Manhattan.

The Sears Tower is ugly.  The WTC was not.

Re #17:  Skyscrapers came into existence when there wasn't much room left for
building level...they had to build upwards since they had to fit x amount of
people into a tiny area.  I like skyscrapers (the Chicago skyline at night
is my favorite view), but the idea of being near the top during a fire is
unsettling.

Re #16:  And another proposal is for four 50-story office towers,
to replace the office space.

I still think the two ideas should be combined with a 19th-century
theme, and the New York skyline should someday sport a tower with
a strong Eiffel-esque look.  Four towers would rise from the earth
and unite into one, which would rise and taper into the sky.  The
splay-footed stance would handle most loads as compression, cutting
the amount of steel required; the taper would keep the ratio of
structure to floor space much more constant as the tower rose; and
the relative rarity of floor space up high would all but guarantee
that there would be *someone* to rent it.

Fire protection systems and other features need to be re-thought.
Plenty of other designers have done it right; the Port Authority
really screwed the pooch by doing it wrong when they should have
known better.

Definitely a restaurant, observation decks and antennas on top.
And an anti-aircraft missile battery or two; there's no telling if
someone might not try to hit buildings in NYC again, and the top
of a tower with a commanding view is the best place to site the
city's defenses.

I like big city skylines, and I like a lot of sky scrapers, but I thought the
WTC was pretty ugly.  I don't object to the height, although I question the
wisdom of rebuilding something that would be an attractive target, but I've
seen a lot of buildings that have been a lot nicer than just being big black
boxes.

What I don't remember well, from when I visited several years ago, was what
the WTC was like at the base.  I have a dim recollection of the being a
somewhat daunting trek to get around the outsides of, but I'm not sure if I'm
remembering that correctly.  I have been noticing rather vast differences in
the feel of the neighborhoods around different types of sky scrapers, between
the very nice part of the San Francisco Financial District my office moved
out of a month or two ago, and the area a few blocks away where we are now.
In the old neighborhoods, the fronts of the sky scrapers came out to the
sidewalks, and generally had nice storefronts on them.  They were quite
pleasant to walk past.  The new neighborhood tends to have the outer edges
of the buildings on stilts with much narrower lobbies, creating a rather
intimidating tunnel effect to get to the doors, and destroying the pleasant
sidewalk effect.  I hope, whatever gets built there, they'll make it pleasant
and convenient to walk around them, and make them part of a neighborhood
rather than their own intimidating structure.

Re #23: An anti-aircraft missile battery is a terrible idea.  These
buildings aren't surrounded by empty fields, you know; by shooting down the
plane you just ensure it'll take out a whole row of *other* buildings.

Re #24: I think the RenCen is a great example of a skyscraper deliberately
designed to *not* be part of the neighborhood.  I'm thinking in particular
of the huge concrete berms around it (that are now being demolished.)  It
was a sort of fortress walled off from the rest of Detroit.

I saw a movie today which I think had WTC in it (they weren't into
describing the landmarks, but they were off to wall street next thing,
and I can't imagine what else those twin towers could have been).  At
the base, there was a huge open plaza, slightly raised from street
level, but quite accessible by pedestrian traffic, which is what
happened in the movie.  It was clearly a popular place to be dropped off
by taxi.  The base of the tower that they showed had an open glass
walled lobby, with numerious glass doors and what looked like a internal
marble walled warren of elevator lobbies and what might have been 1st
floor offices or shops.  The movie didn't show what was under the plaza,
but I believe it was in fact the roof of a giant underground shopping
plaza, possibly multi-level.  I think I've also seen other shots of the
WTC lobby from the inside which had escalators going down and the like.

I ate once at that restaurant at the top of one of the WTC buildings. 
It was totally socked in, so no view. Expensive, too (even for NYC).

i've only been in one of the towers. entered by foot on one side, then took
the ecalator down to the 'lobby' where we exited into that plaza part where
the big sphere was. there was also a krispy creme. we were filming some shots
for a project we were doing for a large office furniture company which were
to be used in an interactive video wall were making for them for a big
furniture fair. the theme of the this scene was that myself and the other actor
were spies and were doing a briefcase handoff at the WTC. we looked shady as
hell and even staged a fake conversation with a security person while the art
director filmed from above. nobody seemed to think anything of it.

i think the underground shopping area you saw was when you come up from the
subway, like they have at most big stops where there will be lots of people
with money burning a hole in their pockets. 

I was in one of the lobbies once, at TKTS.

Re #25:  Manhattan IS an island, you know.  There is at least the
potential to hit the target at such a time that the debris will
be falling toward water.  There is also the fact that pieces of an
aircraft will have a lot less energy, and much less concentrated
energy, than the intact article; this reduces the damage they can
do and probably makes the rest easier to deal with.  This is even
more true for attacks by cruise missiles, the pieces of which
would contain much less fuel and wouldn't burn much.

The mere presence of a missile battery would tend to deflect such
attacks.  There's no point in expending the effort only to fail
ignominously, and then have to deal with the response.

Let's build an Eiffel Tower :)

It would be easier to build radio-controlled destruct systems into
airplanes. (Great confidence boosters for the flying public - you are
guaranteed not to be flown into a building in the event of a hijacking...)

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Hey, they've got it on the Enterprise.

they should turn the hole into a giant kiddie pool
waterpark and build a livonia style stripmall next 
to it and show those bastards that the american way ENDURES.

 ..and give them all happypills!

ABSOLUTELY

I think they should build an office building/roller coaster on the 
site. You could make the cars of the coaster look like airplanes and 
then make them look like they are about to hit the building. You dont 
think that would be tacky, do you?

You know, WTC were cool in a kind of mid century glass and steel funky 
kind of way. They werent particularly beautiful except at night but I 
dont think they were *that* ugly either. I can see why folks might miss 
them. They *did* make the NYC skyline very distinctive. 

I think we should build replicas of the twin towers in downtown Kabul, make
them pay for it, and then walk away.

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