The future of tall buildings in the post-WTC world

WASHINGTON — Has the era of the great city skyscraper ended? Was its demise signaled by the suicide terrorists' diabolical but brilliantly executed destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers?

The Sept. 11 attack, argue urban critics James Howard Kunstler and Nikos Salingaros, proved that the skyscraper was "an experimental building topology that has failed." After the attacks, they wrote on the Web site Planetizen.com, "Who will ever again feel safe and comfortable working 110 stories above the ground? Or 60 stories? Or even 27?"

The indictment goes on. Skyscrapers create disastrous wind shears. In cases of serious fire, they are "proven deathtraps." They overload the infrastructure and public realm of the streets that contain them. "We predict," wrote Kunstler and Salingaros, "that no new megatowers will be built, and existing ones are destined to be dismantled."

It's a stunning prediction — that the structures that symbolized America's 20th-century exuberance and power, not just in New York but in our great cities coast to coast, are to be no more.

A first rejoinder is that it's a stretch, at best, to equate the World Trade Center structures with American skyscrapers in general. The towers spelled excess from their birth — indeed, their architect, Minoru Yamasaki, also designed the Pruitt-Igoe public-housing towers in St. Louis, which became such breeding grounds of urban violence they were dynamited in 1975.

The stark design of the Trade Center towers raised objections from the beginning. Anthony Lewis, then the London bureau chief for The New York Times, reported that sailing back into New York Harbor in 1970, his eye was caught by "twin massive towers, the tallest buildings in the world, rectangular blocks, thrusting gracelessly into the sky, dark and hulking, beyond human scale. . . ."

Now, by the very terrorist act that destroyed them, the towers have become endeared to the American consciousness.

Still, the towers were not the same as all tall structures. Years before they rose, the famed architect Charles Le Corbusier could describe "the vast nocturnal festival of New York" spread out from a high floor in Midtown Manhattan: "No one can imagine it who has not seen it. It is a titanic mineral display, prismatic stratification . . . a diamond, incalculable diamonds."

One shudders to think that terrorism can wipe out the skyscraper creations of our society, now mirrored from Seattle to Miami, Chicago to Dallas, Los Angeles to Boston, and many wondrous cities in between. Notwithstanding some ugly behemoths expressing mostly owners' or architects' egos, there is lots of quality out there — especially the more thoughtful "post-Modernist" designs of the past two decades.

Yet, any successful urban building that makes a statement — economic, civic, or artistic — may attract terrorist attack, especially if it defines a skyline or serves as a powerful people magnet.

If we don't build high buildings, world-known architect Norman Foster told the British newspaper The Guardian, we could try life in bunkers. "And then what, fret about the possibility of death by nerve gas or germ warfare?" Or, he asks, "should we be designing groundscrapers instead of skyscrapers? A determined terrorist could crash-land one of the next generation of super-jumbos across a suburban sprawl and kill thousands."

Where skyscraper critics are right is in insisting it's the street level — the public realm where we all mix — that architects too often forget. London and Rome, notes Kunstler, have achieved excellent density and variety, mostly by holding buildings to under 10 stories.

High rises, argues Portland, Ore., urban designer Michael Mehaffy, are OK if they're respectful of the street and servant to the life of the larger city. He'd encourage, for the WTC site, one or more relatively slender and graceful towers — "defiantly soaring" — to act as symbolic and commemorative elements. But the premium, he says, should be on rebuilding a dense, street-friendly neighborhood.

The secret is to get lots of citizens — not just business boosters and city hall planners — into the act. Back in November 1977, I wrote about the "megastructure blight" in downtown Atlanta — gigantic office buildings and hotels constructed way out of scale with the shops and homes of the historic city, generating "bombed out" belts of parking lots, porno shops and high-crime zones around them.

With more moderately sized buildings, I wrote, Atlanta could have avoided decades of struggle for a humane and inviting center city. Even today, cities that don't truly "need" skyscrapers should avoid such planning errors, the result of giving decision-making over to ruling business and political establishments.

The fact is, a city is not just for the "establishment," it is for everyone. When the hijacked jets hit the Trade Center towers, New Yorkers of every walk of life were profoundly affected. We'll have a stronger country — and better cities — if a full range of citizens are in on city planning for this century.

Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.