Planning For The Worst

After 9/11, we had a chance to build the downtown that New York deserves. Two decades later, timidity and fear have us hemmed in at every turn.

- By Justin Davidson

ON A HEAT-STUNNED late-summer afternoon, the World Trade Center Memorial feels livelier than much of Manhattan. The sun shatters against the tree canopy, reaching the ground in green-gold shards. Tourists approach the twin voids, mesmerized by the whisper of four-sided waterfalls. Even on less sultry days, people slow their pace; it’s rare to see someone striding purposefully across the plaza bearing a briefcase or a pizza. That might be due to the solemnity of the memorial’s design or the explicit border between this sacramental zone and the profane city beyond. Or perhaps it’s because visitors sense the enduring spirit of this place: timidity. You can feel it in the grid of gray stone and gray glass, in the orderly arrangement of planes, and in the swarm of security guards. Two decades ago, the Twin Towers were attacked because they were seen as emblems of capitalist arrogance; the complex that replaced them is a monument to overweening caution.