Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York
Category: Books,History,Americas
Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York Details
From Publishers Weekly Renowned architecture critic Goldberger (Above New York) has undertaken the Herculean task of describing the three years of proposals, counterproposals, chaos and compromise that resulted in a plan for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Unlike many post-9/11 books, this careful, detailed analysis is sure to remain a valuable reference work for future generations, who will wonder how the redevelopment took the shape it did. Goldberger provides a blow-by-blow, yet always readable, account of the myriad interest groups, meetings, press conferences, backroom negotiations and public forums that led to the selection of a plan for the site and designs for the Freedom Tower and memorial, "Reflecting Absence." While displaying a deep understanding of history, urban planning, human psychology and power politics, Goldberger remains a largely neutral reporter of events. At the end, however, he mourns the lost opportunity to diverge from New York's traditionally commercial approach to real estate development. He concludes, "What played out through 2002 and 2003 was the use of architecture for political ends, not the use of politics for architectural ends—that is the key moral of the story.... Idealism met cynicism at Ground Zero, and so far they have battled to a draw." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more From Booklist As we mark the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the future of the 16 acres known as Ground Zero remains a subject of intense debate. Recognizing that the attempt to both memorialize those who perished and bring life back to Lower Manhattan is a historic challenge deserving of careful documentation and analysis, Goldberger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic currently at the New Yorker, offers just that in this avidly detailed account of the messy process by which government officials, developers, architects, family members of the victims of 9/11, and community activists struggled through grueling public hearings to formulate and select a master plan. Fluent in the complicated aesthetic, political, and financial issues involved, keenly attuned to the deep emotions aroused, incisive in his profiling of major players, and refreshingly candid in elucidating the failings of the original World Trade Center (for more on this, see City in the Sky [BKL N 1 03]), Goldberger asks, Can a powerful and realizable vision emerge from so much wrangling and compromise? Stay tuned. Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
If you are interested in City Planning, this book is a must. Paul Goldberger gives us a well-informed and intelligent account of how various institutional, personal, and economic forces present in post-9/11/01 New York City came together over a 10-year period to produce the redevelopment of "Ground Zero" as we know it today. He does a great job at detailing all the salient characteristics of the project, and traces their origin and development in the push and pull of the various forces at work. Paul can do this because he is well versed in the history of the city, its social and political character and institutions, the nature of the city's real estate profession, and at the same time also knows the design and planning professions, and the concepts and ideas that have guided these over time, particularly as they apply to New York City. He also must have had the inside ear of many individuals in and out of government that were close to the action, because at various junctures he provides us with vignettes that could only have been known by the parties at the table. And clearly he had access to a lot of newspapers, because the development of Ground Zero is probably one of the most publicized architectural "events" in recent history. One wonders how he manages to describe the relative merits of the various proposals that surfaced in all these "competitions" (for the Master Plan, for the Memorial, for the Transit Hub...) without offending their creators, yet, if his evaluations seem fair and balanced to the reader, it because his evaluations are almost always based on solid, clearly-stated principles and historical facts. His most important thesis is the one that applies to the least appealing characteristic of the Ground Zero Development: its over-preponderance of office buildings on these 116 acres, at the expense of other possible uses, particularly residential. More mixed uses would have made for a much livelier and "human" environment. This, he shows us, is readily traced to the Port Authority's relentless insistence that the program for the site be patterned after the original World Trade Center with its 10 million sq. ft of office space, plus the previous retail commercial space, and NO residential, all this because the Port Authority was determined to receive all the rent payments it had negotiated for the leases of World Trade Center and not one penny less. As Goldberger notes, only New York's Governor Pataki could have changed that equation, but Pataki did not want to risk any animosity that would disturb his election prospects, and only cared for Ground Zero as a background for his self aggrandizement. Lacking his support, no one, not even Bloomberg, managed to change the equation. This is too bad because, no matter how much or how little you like what you find there today, it is hard to dispute the fact that it would have been so much better with more intermixing of other uses, including residential. Perhaps the future will reverse that. NOTE: I wish the book had a lot more pictures - the ones in the paperback edition are really unsatisfactory.”