This week in The New Republic is an excellent piece on the history of the World Trade Center development: Memories of Overdevelopment by Clay Risen (TNR Digital subscription required). Mr. Risen describes the initial development by David Rockefeller of the World Trade Center in the 1960s as a "pharoanic folly", aligned with neither the interests of New York's civic life, nor simple commercial sense. Not only did the massive scale of the original development require the destruction by eminent domain of many vibrant downtown blocks, there simply was not demand enough to fill so many square feet of office space. The hypervertical, superblock style of its architecture and development had a giant "sucking" effect on the Lower East Side, starving streetfront businesses of the extra foot traffic that goes along with buildings developed on a more humane school.

Unfortunately there are many discouraging parallels between that first WTC development process and the current redevelopment process. The front-running proposals all feature massive amounts of office square footage, despite the fact that there is already a glut in office real estate in lower Manhattan. As Risen notes, the redeveloped WTC may, ironically, kill the market for commercial space in lower Manhattan by exacerbating that glut. If there's anything that the horrifying events of 9/11 have shown, it's that buildings can have significance far beyond their material realities. This fact makes it especially unfortunate that New Yorkers, Americans, and world citizens are being given little meaningful say in the redevelopment of the WTC footprints.

Also see earlier posts, where I've discussed some of the redevelopment proposals considered by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority, and Larry Silverstein, leaseholder of the WTC.