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September 13, 2006
From World Trade Center to Atlantic Yards
Picketing Henry Ford is a new blog by writer Stuart Schrader whose first entry is a continuation of his graduate thesis on the history of the construction of the World Trade Center and a comparison to Atlantic Yards
Some similarities: the use of eminent domain, spurious designations of blight, and an alliance of state and private corporate interests (in the WTC’s case, the peculiar quasigovernmental Port Authority of New York and New Jersey acted as a development corporation; in the AY’s case, the state is allowing a corporation to build on publicly owned land, with heavy public subsidies enabling the development deal). Like the WTC, Ratner’s plan willfully ignores the local context, which happens to be near where I live, rather than something I can today only read about or see in photos. Ratner does not openly propose his project in terms of world history, but as Marshall Berman argued in All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, the modern construction site is “the stage for world history in our time.” More prosaically, because the proposed acreage of this project exceeds that of the WTC (and the square-footage is 3/4 that of the WTC), it is a grave mistake to see the project only in its local context.
The euphoria about centralizing the nitty-gritty of world trade in one complex, which animated the decision to build the WTC, today seems quaint, if not downright depressing, knowing that its planners envisioned their orchestration of world trade as the keystone of an irenic global project... The spirit of the WTC, like its decade’s polyester bell bottoms, characterizes a time, and although it is instantly recognizable as outmoded, it is destined to return again and again because of a peculiar attractiveness. The AY project will surely in 30 years be recognized as marking a specific moment in time, with its specific historical misconceptions, one we might label the total triumph of corporate real estate interests in spite of the urban environment and its inhabitants
Posted by lumi at September 13, 2006 11:45 AM