Rebuilding
Paul Goldberger has an article in the New Yorker this week (sorry, it’s not on-line; you’ll have to get a subscription. Maybe if you wheedle your parents, they’ll be as nice as mine were and pay the freight) suggesting that the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan shouldn’t be limited to putting up excess office space, as Larry Silverstein wants, or a disappointing spire, as the present designs call for, but should instead be made up of new housing stock. He also says the proposal for using the retaining wall as part of the memorial that must be included is an excellent idea, and I agree with him on both counts. And that Donald Trump’s suggestion is just more self-aggrandisement and a bad idea all around.

Downtown was already a much livelier neighborhood by the time M. and I left for Sydney, and the trend of turning office buildings into condos and coops was only increasing. And why not? The views alone would put a commanding price on the real estate. Now with prices averaging in excess of a million dollars U.S., more housing could only help. Well, all right, it could only help the prices in Manhattan to go up even further, but even so, the idea of having people actually living there, in the heart of the heart the terrorists tried to destroy, has tremendous appeal. I wouldn’t suggest any limits to the height, either; I’d love to live a hundred stories up. Fifty, anyway. O.k., 2nd, just so I can get M. into the elevator with me.