subscribe to this pageMarcuse,P . "Urban form and globalization after September 11th: the view from New York" International journal of urban and regional research [0309-1317] 26.3 (2002). 596-606.
The attack on the World Trade Center will have a significant effect on urban development in New York City, not so much because it will change existing patterns, but because it will intensify them. The effect will come from the way leaders in the political and business community act after September 11th, more than from what the attack itself accomplished. Among the key effects will be a further barricading of spaces within the city, a concentrated deconcentration of business activities away from the center and their citadelization. The process of public planning is increasingly irrelevant; deplanning might be a better word for it. Decision-making is concentrated in quasi-governmental bodies, freed from the obligation to follow democratic procedures. Business groups, particularly those involved in global processes, are well organized and are pressing for planning and for subsidies serving their interests. There is publicly-oriented activity also, but less focused and not (yet?) raising distributional and social justice issues as central concerns. The net result is a further skewing of the benefits and costs of globalization.
"Planning Histories, Urban Futures, and the World Trade Center Attack." Journal of planning history [1538-5132] 2.3 (2003). 195-.
This article seeks to explore the place of planning history in the discussion of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and of its aftermath. It is based on an analysis of a range of articles and messages published on this subject, particularly within a month of the attack: newspapers, a planning Web site, a listserv for urban historians, and academic planning journals. After indicating the types of presence that planning and urban histories have had in the post-9/11 discourse, the article outlines some of the debates on urban futures--and assumptions about urban pasts-- that have been common in this period, before concluding with observations on the various identities of those involved in these discussions. The article not only seeks to assess the lessons from this retrospective process of looking toward the "ghosts" of wars and reconstructions past but also examines how these--as well as planning history--have been instrumentalized to imagine alternative urban futures.
International Planning Studies; May-Aug2004, Vol. 9 Issue 2/3, p139-153, 15p
The terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City in September 2001 set in motion a planning process meant to rebuild on the site us quickly as possible. The first attempt at plan development-Phase 1-failed. The six planning proposals were unanimously rejected. Phase 1 had to be repeated. What went wrong? This paper examines the event through the lens of the inherent marginality of public planning in the USA, the idiosyncrasies of local and local-state politics, and the interaction of property rights and the public interest.