The Next WTC

Should we really build something even taller than the last one? Nine proposals for New York City's future skyline.

By Colin Allen, published on December 01, 2002

Nine proposed versions of the future World Trade Center were released to the public on Wednesday, December 18. While building proposals are usually tucked deep within the pages of newspapers, the overwhelming front-page coverage reflects the importance that the currently vacant 16 acres of Manhattan land has on the minds of many throughout the nation, if not the world. The plan that is eventually chosen will have to fulfill society's divergent expectations for it being both a memorial and a workplace.

"People associate New York with the World Trade Center, maybe more intimately than the Statue of Liberty," says Harvey Schlossberg, Ph.D., the former chief psychologist of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who worked in the WTC for 10 years. "New York is new, growing, large, bigger-than-life. And that is what [designers] have to shoot for."

All of the plans would reestablish the skyline of the city, and four would build the largest building in the world at the site. Interestingly, the most popular proposal is for a tower that is 1,765 feet tall—400 feet taller than the original towers—according to an informal CNN online poll.

Schlossberg is not surprised by the public's motivation to build on a grander scale. "It makes them feel like they have not lost anything," he explains. "It's a matter of feeling like you have not been defeated. You are able to come back and find the strength to rebuild—only better."

"I lost very close friends there, and to me, that can never be rebuilt," Schlossberg says. He worries that the tension between memorializing September 11 and the development of valuable real estate will not be resolved anytime soon.

"I think inevitably, everyone will be disappointed," says Schlossberg. "But these concepts grow on you over time. By the time it is finished, everyone will be pretty comfortable with it."

A decision on the nine proposals will be made by January 31, 2003.