Listening to the City
NY Times Editorial July 23, 2002
The TV cameras at the Javits Convention Center last Saturday showed a cavernous room filled with almost 5,000 New Yorkers, many shaking their heads or nodding or sketching towers in the air with their hands. What a television picture could not show was how these participants were breathing life into the process of rebuilding Lower Manhattan.
Public participation in the design of public space in New York City is too often confined to the streets or the courts. On this singular occasion, people who cared urgently about what happens to the World Trade Center site had a chance to respond without staging a demonstration or filing suit. It was a heartening experience, as urban planners and secretaries, out-of-work actors and construction workers registered their veto of the first six designs and offered counsel about what should replace them. The Regional Plan Association deserves congratulations for organizing this event.
New Yorkers, of course, cannot speak in one voice and their suggestions were sometimes contradictory. But they are clear about some things. They want an "inspired vision." They want "a new heart for New York City." They did not like these plans because there was too much commercial space and nothing monumental. One group added the final insult: It "looks like Albany." As inspiring as it was to hear so many thoughtful opinions, the real test of an event called "Listening to the City" is whether the authorities were actually listening.
Even plans for WTC include a jab at city
Albany -- Officials stand up for Albany in face of a history of put-downs
Albany Times Union, July 27, 2002
Albany just can't get no respect. First, it was Ed Koch making cracks about the city and gingham dresses. Then Dave Letterman wondered why anyone would hop a high-speed train to Albany.
Now, those viewing proposals for the World Trade Center site took a swipe at the Capital City.
About 5,000 New Yorkers gathered at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center last Saturday to comment on six site ideas. When one plan went up, the remark, "It looks like Albany," flashed across the screen. The crowd roared.
But no one here is laughing.
"It's unfortunate that people don't have a real good perspective on our city. It's our state capital," Mayor Jerry Jennings said Friday. "What we called the South Mall, when it was built, was one of the largest construction projects in the world at the time and was very well received from all corners, from an urban planning perspective, for its architecture, for its design."
Elizabeth Griffin, executive director of Historic Albany Foundation, adds, "You can say what you want about" the Empire State Plaza, "but the architecture says so much about the society that built it. It's a record of who we were, and it says a lot about who we will be." The foundation is looking into listing it on the National Register of Historic Sites.
In 1982, then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch, the front-runner in the governor's race against underdog Mario Cuomo, uttered what is probably the most famous put-down of Albany.
Koch said he wasn't going to be caught "wasting time in a pickup truck when you have to drive 20 miles to buy a gingham dress or a Sears Roebuck suit."
Shortly after Jennings was elected mayor in 1993, Letterman yakked about high-speed trains on his late-night show and took a shot at the city. "Why would anyone want to get to Albany in 55 minutes?" Jennings sent him a taped response, but Letterman never played it.
The participants at the World Trade Center planning session wanted fewer office buildings and commercial development and more schools, housing and cultural institutions. They wanted something inspiring.
Albany Assemblyman Jack McEneny thinks that mind-set was behind the slight of Albany, which just last week was puffing out its chest over plans to open a $403 million semiconductor research and development center at the University of Albany.
"It's not necessarily that they were laughing at Albany," he said. "I think people expected something spectacular of the World Trade Center, something like a memorial ... And, it opens up and it's an office complex. The (Plaza) is reasonably well known, but it's an office complex."
"They weren't going to take that for this world-class memorial of prominence and its sacred space. Are you kidding me?" he added. What is needed is "a strong, almost unprecedented statement for the people who were the victims and the heroes, and instead they were shown a government office complex."
Executive Summary, Final Report "Listening to the City"
December 23, 2002
In an extraordinary demonstration of faith in democracy and love for a great city, some 5,000 people from throughout metropolitan New York pooled their energy and talent in an historic series of public meetings and online discussions called "Listening to the City." Through these 21st Century Town Meetings - designed to give people a voice in rebuilding the World Trade Center site, New York City and the region - people strove to make a virtue of their differences by joining together to describe their visions for the future and to help each other recover from a shattering attack.
The messages generated by this committed, energized assembly - one of the largest gatherings of its kind - reached decision-makers quickly and unmistakably. People urged their leaders to think boldly, to be imaginative and above all, to chart a course that honors the victims and the heroes of September 11 with dignity. They called on government officials and planning agencies to seek ways of rebuilding not just "ground zero," but also the neighborhoods around it, the city and the thousands of lives affected by September 11 and its aftermath. And they stressed the need to make much-needed housing and transportation infrastructure improvements in Lower Manhattan and beyond.
What they asked for, indeed, was nothing less than a new downtown that is inspired in design, that mixes com¬merce, culture and homes for people of all income levels, that helps drive the region's economy and that restores the grandeur that the New York skyline lost when the Twin Towers fell.
For its participants, the size and diversity of "Listening to the City" were galvanizing. "Listening to the City" brought more than 4,300 people to the Jacob Javits Convention Center on July 20. About 200 more participated in a similar meeting on July 22. And more than 800 took part in the two week online dialogue that followed. People who might normally never meet - relatives of victims, downtown residents, survivors of September 11, emergency workers, business leaders, the unemployed and underemployed, interested citizens and community advocates - sat side-by-side and contributed myriad points of view, debated planners' redevelopment ideas and shared their hopes and concerns about how to reconstruct lives profoundly disrupted on September 11.
As John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), observed the forum, he told the New York Daily News how much he was moved by this exercise in participatory democracy. "This is what the terrorists didn't understand," he said. "This is what they did¬n't know. It's absolutely beautiful."
"Listening to the City" participants were asked to give their thoughts about six preliminary concepts for the Trade Center site, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the LMDC unveiled days before the forum. Many criticized them as too dense, too dull and too commercial. The poor reception these concepts received reflected disappointment not only with the plans themselves, but also with their underlying premise, which seemed to produce not six different ideas but a half dozen variations on one idea. In a widely quoted comment that became the signature remark of the July 20 forum, one participant dismissed the designs by saying they all "look like Albany."
Shortly after "Listening to the City", LMDC and the Port Authority pledged that a new program will be developed.
Broken Ground: The Hole in the City's Heart (excerpt)
NY Times September 11, 2006
˜IT LOOKS LIKE ALBANY"
In a conference room overlooking the Hudson River, Mr. Betts, a tall, barrel-chested businessman wearing a blue vest with the Chelsea Piers logo, recalled the way that his sports complex was rapidly transformed on Sept. 11 into a triage center.
Right from that day I remember telling Tom that I wanted to get involved in this thing,Mr. Betts said, referring to his partner, Tom A. Bernstein.
Mr. Betts, a development corporation board member, asked its chairman, Mr. Whitehead, “to put me in charge of ground zero.†It was not long before Mr. Betts got a taste of just how difficult it would be to oversee a public project involving clashing government entities, a private developer and a grieving public.
“With 20/20 hindsight, we never should have moved forward with so many conflicting stakes on this piece of real estate,†he said. “Those people bombed the most complicated site in the state. If they had chosen the Empire State Building, there would have been no Port Authority, no Larry Silverstein. It seemed like everybody had a vested interest in ground zero.
It took more than a year to settle on a master plan. In early 2002, the Port Authority and the development corporation began the process by seeking bids from architects. And that is when it came to light that the government was treating Mr. Silverstein's lease as sacrosanct, that it wanted to replace the 10 million square feet of office space that was lost.
This was a disastrous decision, and no one could believe it, said Mr. Yaro of the Regional Plan Association.
A Manhattan architectural firm was awarded the contract and a challenge: to come up with six alternative land-use plans.
When the plans were unveiled in July 2002, critics dismissed them as uninspired. The public's response, delivered at a meeting, called "Listening to the City," that drew thousands to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, amounted to a Bronx cheer. What people especially condemned was the site's density, particularly the scale of the commercial square footage.
Somebody said, ˜It looks like Albany, Mr. Betts said. "That was the killer line."
In the name of democracy, the development corporation discarded the six plans and embarked on a worldwide search for a more visionary master planner.
