After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City

by Michael Sorkin (Editor), Sharon Zukin (Editor)

Overview

The terrorist attacks of September 11 have created an unprecedented public discussion about the uses and meanings of the central area of lower Manhattan that was once the World Trade Center. While the city sifts through the debris, contrary forces shaping its future are at work. Developers jockey to control the right to rebuild "ground zero." Financial firms line up for sweetheart deals while proposals for memorials are gaining in appeal. In After the World Trade Center, eminent social critics Sharon Zukin and Michael Sorkin call on New York's most acclaimed urbanists to consider the impact of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and what it bodes for the future of New York. Contributors take a close look at the reaction to the attack from a variety of New York communities and discuss possible effects on public life in the city.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135774950
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/05/2013
Series:	Cultural Spaces
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Michael Sorkin is principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio and director of the graduate urban design program at New York's City College. He is the author of Other Plans (2002), The Next Jerusalem (2002), Some Assembly Required (2001), Giving Ground (co-edited with Joan Copjec, 1999), Wiggle (1998), Exquisite Corpse (1994), Local Code (1993), and Variations on a Theme Park (edited, 1991). He also contributes to the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. Sharon Zukin is Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Broeklundian Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College. She is the author of The Cultures of Cities (1995), Landscapes of Power (winner of the C. Wright Mills Award, 1991), Structures of Capital (co-edited with Paul DiMaggio, 1990), and Loft Living (1982).

Table of Contents

1.Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin, Introduction 2. Marshall Berman, When Bad Buildings Happen to Good People 3.Sharon Zukin, Our World Trade Center 4.Edwin G. Burrows,Manhattan at War 5.John Kuo Wei Tchen,Whose Downtown?!? 6.Beverly Gage The First Wall Street Bomb 7.David Harvey, Cracks in the Edifice of the Empire State 8.Mark Wigley,Insecurity By Design 9.Eric Darton, The Janus Face of Architectural Terrorism 10.Neil Smith,Scales of Terror 11.M. Christine Boyer, The Wounded Skyline, 12.Andrew Ross,The Odor of Publicity 13.Moustafa Bayoumi,Letter to a G-Man 14.Arturo Ignacio Sanchez,From Jackson Heights to Nuestra America 15.Peter Marcuse,What Type of Planning After September 11? 16.Setha Low, Spaces of Reflection, Recovery, and Resistance 17. Robert Paaswell,A Time for Transportation Strategy 18.Keller Easterling,Enduring Innocence 19.Michael Sorkin,The Center Cannot Hold 20.Mike Wallace, New York, New Deal About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

Beginning as a local tragedy, the attack on the World Trade Center towers quickly assumed both national and international import. This collection of essays, edited by social critics Sorkin (editor, The Next Jerusalem) and Zukin (Landscapes of Power), seeks to revisit the tragedy as a local event and consider September 11 in light of New York's urban history. The essays, by the editors and 17 urbanists, examine how the towers came to be built and the neighborhoods that had to be destroyed to make way for this paean to international commerce. They also examine the chilling parallels between this attack and the Wall Street bombing of 1920, as well as the violation of the building codes that took place during construction of the towers. Throughout, there is deep concern for what the towers' construction and demolition and likely plans for reconstruction have to say about democracy in the nation's financial capital. Collectively, all the contributors (e.g., Marshall Berman, Beverly Gage, Edwin G. Burrows) call for a more democratic New York, one where the voices of all the people can be heard, not just the economically and politically powerful. Recommended for academic and larger public library collections in urban studies and New York history. Christopher Brennan, SUNY at Brockport Lib. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"The contributors read like a who's who of progressive Manhattan." — The San Francisco Chronicle
"After the World Trade Center... is a rare and unflinching lesson book on New York among the truckloads of books emerging with the anniversary of the attacks. Michael Sorkin, arguably America's most provocative architecture critic, edited the book along with sociology professor Sharon Zukin... As a whole, the book offers and unapologetic, left-of-center viewpoint. But its mining of Manhattan's deep past and often ironic present offers some important insights for the city's future." — The Oregonian
"vividly of a moment, capturing on paper what hovers in the air...And that's the value of After the World Trade Center: It shows how, as New York faces a challenge once inconceivable, the people who love it are fearful that belligerent panic will trample deeper issues and needs." — San Francisco Chronicle
"Global and local in outlook, reaching beyond the personal-tragedy, American-values perspective that has dominated the media, this thoughtful volume is not just for New Yorkers." — Booklist
"[A] singularly politically incorrect radical rethinking of the whole event and the great city in which it happened...one of the most provocative and perhaps most important books yet to come out of the event." — The Buffalo News
"After the World Trade Center... is a rare and unflinching lesson book on New York among the truckloads of books emerging with the anniversary of the attacks. Michael Sorkin, arguably America's most provocative architecture critic, edited the book along with sociology professor Sharon Zukin.As a whole, the book offers an unapologetic, left-of-center viewpoint. But its mining of Manhattan's deep past and often ironic present offers some important insights for the city's future." — Portland Oregonian

From the Publisher