9/11 = 2

A while back I assured readers that architecture, design, and urbanism would be among the principal topics of this page. Those of you who felt misled by this claim no longer need worry. Yesterday the Times reported that insurers of the World Trade Center have been ordered by a federal jury to compensate its leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, for two separate 9/11 incidents instead of just one. Though the insurance companies involved are expected to appeal the decision, Silverstein is hailing it as a victory for all New Yorkers. A double payout for him means a more readily financed rebuilding effort, and hopefully a more successful one as well.

Since September 2001, Silverstein has steadily retreated from his initial plan to replace all of the square footage lost on 9/11, largely because of the uncertainty of large-scale real estate speculation in the aftermath of a recession. What first emerged as an ill-conceived master plan was refined and modified a number of times, but seemed unlikely to be built in its entirety so long as Silverstein was paying for it. The complex of tall buildings proposed in the Liebeskind master plan, for example, had been scaled back so much that by earlier this year, they were expected to be built as 3-4 story "retail bases" that could potentially accommodate office space above in the future as demand dictated.

This would have been an unfortunate development indeed. The core elements of the master plan for ground zero--David Childs' Freedom Tower, Michael Arad's memorial, and Santiago Calatrava's transit hub--always remained, but the other space around the site seemed doomed to become a kind of outdoor shopping mall, with Best Buy, Old Navy, and other large "box" stores the likely tenants. Regardless of how well Mr. Liebeskind's initial master plan elements are carried out by their individual architects, a cluster of shopping around the former WTC site would detach the area from the much denser fabric of lower Manhattan, and might be more akin to the Fulton Mall/Metrotech development found across the river in downtown Brooklyn--hardly a worthy model of civic space or good urban planning.

Even if he does receive a double payout from his insurers, the total amount Silverstein can be given is only 4.6 billion, according to lawyers involved in the case. Still, this amount would be enough to finance the Freedom Tower with some to spare, and both the memorial and the new transit hub will be financed by others. Hopefully, the idea of building up the areas around the memorial only as tenants are found can now be abandoned. While any additional new towers will undoubtedly contain retail space, it will ultimately be better for the city if the retail is not the first thing the public sees built next to ground zero.