From Ground Zero to Ground Everywhere

By Jane Holtz Kay

The designation, "Ground Zero," has faded into the dust of the World Trade Center site along with the last of the bulldozers. Today, the sacred site has turned into the most hotly contested turf in the New York real estate world and earned a new term. As summer ends, the word "Footprint" --that everyday term used by developers-- describes the sacred property up for grabs in Lower Manhattan.

And yet, for all the anguish of 9/11, the besieged turf is a symbol of less emotionally-charged spaces where advocates have begun to ally and fight for urban and environmental principles. In Lower Manhattan, as on Main Street, the urge to tame free-for-all, dollar-first developers is escalating. Real estate overlords, be they private purse-wielders or Port Authority despots, find themselves in Ground Zero-like confrontations with those who would save the landscape and cityscape.

The 4500 people who sat ten-by-ten around tables and viewed land-use plans in New York's "Listening to the City" assembly in July have certainly stalled, and probably shifted, the developer's Monopoly board. So, too, communities across the country have begun to address and appropriate land use decisions. In the last election, voters in 72 percent of 553 cities, states and towns said "yes" to "smart growth" ballots to stop sprawl, save green, and create development pegged to rail.

Some 1200 rural land, open space and other conservation trusts are actively engaged in purchasing or inserting safeguards. Placing easements, restrictions, and preserves on farm and forest cuts the cost of servicing the new condos and ranchettes that crowd them. Preserving the landscape stops the fringe from mindless commerce and the urban core from a population drain. By one estimate, some 10,000 websites reflect groups and individuals protecting our last-chance landscape.

Sacred or profane, urban or rural, public or private space, the process is familiar. The developer comes up with the maximum control and the minimum product for the chosen locale; officials mindlessly sign on; and architects do little more than arrange the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.

For New York's 16 World Trade Center acres, the fast-track, would-be builders labeled six look-alike designs with six random, even comical, names: Plaza, Square, Triangle, Garden, Park, Promenade, chosen from a dictionary or random kit of parts, to fill 11 million square feet of new office towers. In the outburbs of major cities, they title the vast lookalike subdivisions "Merrimac Landing" (a mile from any river or landing) or "Colonial Acres" (three centuries from that hallowed time).

Neighbors -- whether actual neighbors, or neighbors in their shared grief and aspirations -- seek to save their destiny. They recognize that terrorism comes in many guises and playing havoc with the environment is one of them.

Happily, in both Lower Manhattan and Main Street America, watchdogs and stewards -- from New York's Municipal Art Society to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, from neighborhood to national activists -- raise their voices to create community housing and meaningful monuments.

Advocates everywhere share the urge for 24/7 neighborhoods and life on the street. They realize they can do better than the barren streetscape and sterile underground mall built below the Twin Towers a generation ago. They know they can improve its rural counterpart as well, the Sprawlmart that destroys countryside and empties Main Street. The same needs and knowledge echo from the Heartland as from the nation's urban heart.

Originally published at Tompaine.com, August 25, 2002

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