Draft Scope
World Trade Center Memorial and Redevelopment Plan
Generic Environmental Impact Statement

July 23, 2003

The coming months are critical in the rebuilding process. The memorial competition is underway and the visionary results of the second WTC site competition is facing the realities of implementation

Over the course of endless hours of discussion and debate within the civic groups, among members of the public, and in the media, certain aspects of the development plan have come to be seen as not so much more important than others but less mutable, less subject to modification without losing the essence of what drew the public to the selected Libeskind plan.

While other elements, such as the actual design of the buildings, may change without damage, changing or eliminating others would destroy what made this plan special.

In the view of Metro APA those items that should be considered immutable and not subject to compromise in the process of determining environmental impact alternatives or to satisfy particular interest groups or commercial interests are:

• Slurry wall/memorial pit. The dramatic sunken memorial area, already compromised from 70 feet deep to 30 feet deep, should not be sacrificed in order to make if "less inconvenient."
• 1,776-foot tower. Participants in every public forum (Imagine New York, Listening to the City, etc) as well as civic groups and neighborhood residents agreed that some iconic image needed to be placed in the downtown skyline to replace the drama of the twin towers. The tower, like the pit, were two of the most noted elements of the Libeskind plan that caused people to endorse it.
• Sacredness of the footprints. From the beginning, people have held that the footprints of One and Two World Trade Center must be respected.
• Street connections through the site. The old WTC isolated itself from Lower Manhattan and cut downtown areas apart from one another. The restoration of the street grid - and the integration of that grid with the areas outside the WTC site-are necessary to prevent making the same mistake twice.
• Hierarchy of uses in the site. The uses on the site should reflect the desire to make downtown a true mixed use community. A realistic program should be developed based upon the attainment of that goal. Appropriateness, not expediency, should determine the amount of commercial office space, retail space, conference center and hotel facilities, new open space areas and museum and cultural facilities that can reasonably fit on the site. Such a realistic and appropriate program has not yet been developed or displayed to the public.
• Non-commercial uses near the memorial area. While some have objected to the WTC site being treated as a "graveyard" and wished a return to the old commercial-only use of the site, the point is that 9/11 did happen here and it must be remembered with more than tokenism. The memorial must be allowed to dominate the area of the footprints and must not be cheapened by commercial encroachments.
• Dominance of street level retail. The restored street grid is worthless-other than to vehicular traffic-if it does not have street life. Pedestrians walking to and from work fill sidewalks at rush hour, but to have live streets in-between requires street-level retail. The underground mall, convenient as if may be, must not suffocate or prevent street-level commercial or the newly restored streets will be dead.
• Public open space. From the beginning, the need for public open space-something better than a windswept plaza like the old WTC-has been stressed by everyone. The Libeskind plan calls for a chain of open spaces throughout the site. This concept was another cited by those who supported the Libeskind plan. Sacrificing this concept to squeeze more office space onto the site would be a violation of public trust.

The New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association has been concerned with the planning aspects of rebuilding the World Trade Center site-and revitalizing downtown Manhattan-since shortly after the 9/11 tragedy.

Through our involvement as a co-founder of New York New Visions and as a member of the Civic Alliance, we have sought to inform the public and influence decision makers about areas of the rebuilding challenge in which we as planners could share our expertise.

Sound planning principles, in addition to public opinion, call for these elements of the plan to be safeguarded. We trust we will see them upheld throughout the difficult decision process ahead.