SCAPEGOATS BY DESIGN
By JOHN PODHORETZ
NY Post 7/19/02
July 19, 2002 --
THE most brilliant political gambit in the past week took
place in full public view on Tuesday, when the six designs
for the World Trade Center site were released.
Did I call them designs? They weren't really designs at all.
Rather, they were scapegoats in design form. And they
served their purpose brilliantly. Everybody with a bone to
pick or an ax to grind went after the designs with a
vengeance. They've been torn to shreds. Nobody has a good
word to say about them.
The buildings are too big. The memorial is too small. The
memorial is in the wrong place. There's too much retail
space. They're clunky. There's not enough beauty. A critic
at another newspaper even suggested the designs are
failures because they don't take into account just how much
America is hated by the rest of the world.
Sounds like a big failure? Actually, the proceeding was an
enormous success.
The Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan
Redevelopment Corporation urban planners responsible for
the six designs knew perfectly well that whatever they came
up with at first would be deemed an outrage, a monstrosity, a
work of evil.
So rather than offer a solitary design to absorb the rage,
disappointment and hatred of those viewing it, planner
Alexander Garvin and the architectural firm of Beyer
Blinder Belle offered up six designs to absorb the blows.
Garvin & Co. know that the various constituent groups vying
for control of the site have wildly conflicting interests, and
nothing could have satisfied all of them. Indeed, such groups
get their power in large measure from standing in opposition.
If a constituent group acts like an immovable object, it might
be able to force others to compromise.
To take the most poignant example, the families of the 9/11
victims - or at least their self-appointed leaders - are
committed to the proposition that nothing should be built on
the "footprints" where the two mammoth buildings stood.
That's "sacred ground," they say, and four of the six designs
keep the footprints unfilled as a result. They're far uglier, by
common consensus, than the two designs that use some of
the footprints.
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, we leave the
victims' families and come to the no-growth crowd. The
no-growthers exists to oppose any kind of new construction
in the city, even if it's only meant to replace what went
before. This view has hardened into something approaching
a religious doctrine, which makes arguing with it almost
impossible.
The no-growthers are made especially livid by commercial
development - even in a place where there has been little but
commercial property for a century or more. They're repelled
by the fact that the Port Authority is insisting that every
square foot of space it leased out before 9/11 be rebuilt.
Then there are the wacko utopians, who seem to think that
Osama bin Laden cleared out a nice chunk of space in
which to accomplish all sorts of lovely things, and who are
especially angered by the amount of retail space in the
designs.
Nobody's happy. And there's no question that this insistence
has led the planners to create tall, fat buildings that seem
bereft of delicacy and understatement.
But I suspect this is something the planners and the
powers-that-be consciously anticipated. Since they knew
their first designs wouldn't survive, they used their initial
designs to establish a negotiating position. Since they have
offered a somewhat extreme set of initial proposals, they can
now comfortably negotiate backward.
The resulting compromise will feature large buildings, but not
so large. There will be retail, but it won't be quite so
dominant. And as memorial designs themselves become a
subject of debate, I suspect the sacred nature of the
"footprints" will, too.
Let's face it: If the planners and architects had come up with
a design to rival St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel,
the institutionalized opposition in New York City would have
objected to it simply as a matter of course.
It's sad, but true: By offering up mediocrity to begin with,
Alexander Garvin and his colleagues can conclude this
process with a beautiful, viable and meaningful replacement
for the nightmarish hole at Ground Zero.
|
By JOHN PODHORETZ
NY Post 7/19/02
July 19, 2002 --
THE most brilliant political gambit in the past week took
place in full public view on Tuesday, when the six designs
for the World Trade Center site were released.
Did I call them designs? They weren't really designs at all.
Rather, they were scapegoats in design form. And they
served their purpose brilliantly. Everybody with a bone to
pick or an ax to grind went after the designs with a
vengeance. They've been torn to shreds. Nobody has a good
word to say about them.
The buildings are too big. The memorial is too small. The
memorial is in the wrong place. There's too much retail
space. They're clunky. There's not enough beauty. A critic
at another newspaper even suggested the designs are
failures because they don't take into account just how much
America is hated by the rest of the world.
Sounds like a big failure? Actually, the proceeding was an
enormous success.
The Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan
Redevelopment Corporation urban planners responsible for
the six designs knew perfectly well that whatever they came
up with at first would be deemed an outrage, a monstrosity, a
work of evil.
So rather than offer a solitary design to absorb the rage,
disappointment and hatred of those viewing it, planner
Alexander Garvin and the architectural firm of Beyer
Blinder Belle offered up six designs to absorb the blows.
Garvin & Co. know that the various constituent groups vying
for control of the site have wildly conflicting interests, and
nothing could have satisfied all of them. Indeed, such groups
get their power in large measure from standing in opposition.
If a constituent group acts like an immovable object, it might
be able to force others to compromise.
To take the most poignant example, the families of the 9/11
victims - or at least their self-appointed leaders - are
committed to the proposition that nothing should be built on
the "footprints" where the two mammoth buildings stood.
That's "sacred ground," they say, and four of the six designs
keep the footprints unfilled as a result. They're far uglier, by
common consensus, than the two designs that use some of
the footprints.
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, we leave the
victims' families and come to the no-growth crowd. The
no-growthers exists to oppose any kind of new construction
in the city, even if it's only meant to replace what went
before. This view has hardened into something approaching
a religious doctrine, which makes arguing with it almost
impossible.
The no-growthers are made especially livid by commercial
development - even in a place where there has been little but
commercial property for a century or more. They're repelled
by the fact that the Port Authority is insisting that every
square foot of space it leased out before 9/11 be rebuilt.
Then there are the wacko utopians, who seem to think that
Osama bin Laden cleared out a nice chunk of space in
which to accomplish all sorts of lovely things, and who are
especially angered by the amount of retail space in the
designs.
Nobody's happy. And there's no question that this insistence
has led the planners to create tall, fat buildings that seem
bereft of delicacy and understatement.
But I suspect this is something the planners and the
powers-that-be consciously anticipated. Since they knew
their first designs wouldn't survive, they used their initial
designs to establish a negotiating position. Since they have
offered a somewhat extreme set of initial proposals, they can
now comfortably negotiate backward.
The resulting compromise will feature large buildings, but not
so large. There will be retail, but it won't be quite so
dominant. And as memorial designs themselves become a
subject of debate, I suspect the sacred nature of the
"footprints" will, too.
Let's face it: If the planners and architects had come up with
a design to rival St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel,
the institutionalized opposition in New York City would have
objected to it simply as a matter of course.
It's sad, but true: By offering up mediocrity to begin with,
Alexander Garvin and his colleagues can conclude this
process with a beautiful, viable and meaningful replacement
for the nightmarish hole at Ground Zero.
- alex 7-24-2002 12:11 am