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Out of Ground Zero: Case Studies in Urban Reinvention
The events that took place on September 11, 2001, in New York City are the background for a series of essays exploring the response of different cities at different times to natural or man-made disaster. How have cities coped with cataclysmic change in the urban fabric both physically and psychologically? How have they memorialized what they have lost, and how have they imagined their future? What have been the effects, in both the short and long term, of these efforts to rebuild the city? From the devastating earthquake that shook Lisbon in 1755 to the Great Chicago fire in 1871; from the bombing of Hiroshima to the destruction of Rotterdam and Plymouth during the second World War; from the cities and towns ravaged by the Bosnian War to the symbolism of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem—this book offers varying perspectives on how cities have responded to catastrophic disasters. Following these case studies is a history of destruction and rebuilding in Manhattan, and a reflection on the role of cities in sustaining democratic culture concludes the book. Contributors to this volume include leading urban theorists, architectural historians, cultural critics, architects, and a film-maker.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2002
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January 6, 2023
In 1755, most of Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake, which was followed by a tsunami wave and then an enormous fire. Eventually Portugal's military engineers - guided by the Marquês de Pombal - rebuilt the whole city . They established regulations governing the design of all new buildings, and set out a new urban grid that completely obliterated the previous patterns of land ownership and created vast speculative building plots that came to be inhabited by a new bourgeoisie. That is one of the awful stories of urban destruction and reconstruction that are included in this remarkable book.
Urban disasters really bring out the shenanigans, political intrigues, and wheeling-dealing that always seem to take place after such tragedies, when there is a rush for land and profit. It seems to be a law of nature. After the Nazi bombing of Rotterdam, as Han Meyer recounts, the fat cats got together and made sure everything that had not been flattened by the German aeroplanes was flattened by Dutch bulldozers. A dreadful, inhuman new city plan obliterated every trace of the old city, leaving a mess that Rotterdam's planners are still trying to fix today. Meyer's analysis adds fuel to suspicions about how speculative business always seems quick to benefit from disaster - any disaster. The pre-war photographs of old Rotterdam will tear your heart out.
In 1871 in Chicago, a similar story became immortalised in a famous song : "One dark night, when people were in bed/Mrs. O’ Leary lit a lantern in her shed/The cow kicked it over, winked its eye, and said/There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." Whether or not the great fire of Chicago was caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow, the incredible tale of what John G. Shortall then did is entirely true. At the height of the fire, he saw that the Chicago Central Courthouse, just across the street, was about to go up in flames. He immediately ran over, got into the building, and stole forty years' worth of abstracts and indexes detailing Chicago's real-estate deals, hiring a couple of passing escaped convicts to help him load his cart. Using what he had stolen, he created the Chicago Title and Trust Company which (as Ross Miller so lucidly describes) eventually made possible the construction of the first skyscrapers.
Analogous disasters, followed by equally nefarious scheming and wheeling-dealing, have befallen many other cities and almost always, when they happen, as in the case of Plymouth (England), the urban planner comes across as a wretched collaborator, full of rhetoric about building a new world whilst carving up the city to keep the powerful happy in their counting-houses. Alan Powers recounts how after the Nazi bombing had flattened Plymouth, an acquiescent Lord Abercrombie, working on behalf of Waldorf Astor (the mayor) and his wife Nancy (ironically, a Nazi sympathiser) completely redesigned the whole city based on a stiffly regimented new plan that completely obliterated what was left of the historic fabric.
Hiroshima was the worst. Carola Hein recounts how on the sunny morning of August 6, 1945 the bomb-aimer of the B-29 "Enola Gay" took aim at a landmark bridge in the city centre. In a split second the whole place was flattened and 50 years later, people were still dying from the effects of the Bomb. The reconstruction of Hiroshima proved to be yet another land-grab by the powerful that Kenzo Tange's memorial buildings did little to conceal.
But there is a misconception in this otherwise well-researched and very readable book about urban tragedy and reconstruction: it confuses the destruction of entire cities (such as the continuous carpet bombing by the Germans of London, all night, every night, for nine months, from 7 Sept 1940 to 11 May 1941) with the destruction of symbolic single building complexes like the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001. For all the godforsaken ugliness of that event, it only caused a few torn threads in Manhattan's grid; the destruction was not city-wide. What followed was a shameless PR and architectural glitz spectacular concealing a tasteless money-making operation. That's the real subtext of this important book: there's an urban greed that thrives on disasters and - dare one say it - benefits from them. In his excellent piece on the Big Apple, Max Page stops just short of saying this out loud.
The incessant assaults on the Qubbat aṣ-Ṣakhra (Dome of the Rock) in Jerusalem are interestingly documented here by the Arab scholar Kanan Makiya, whilst in another essay Milan Prodanovich describes the destruction of the Balkan cities of Dubrovnik, Vukovar, and Belgrade, explaining a whole series of political problems that many of us had not fully understood before.
Urban disasters really bring out the shenanigans, political intrigues, and wheeling-dealing that always seem to take place after such tragedies, when there is a rush for land and profit. It seems to be a law of nature. After the Nazi bombing of Rotterdam, as Han Meyer recounts, the fat cats got together and made sure everything that had not been flattened by the German aeroplanes was flattened by Dutch bulldozers. A dreadful, inhuman new city plan obliterated every trace of the old city, leaving a mess that Rotterdam's planners are still trying to fix today. Meyer's analysis adds fuel to suspicions about how speculative business always seems quick to benefit from disaster - any disaster. The pre-war photographs of old Rotterdam will tear your heart out.
In 1871 in Chicago, a similar story became immortalised in a famous song : "One dark night, when people were in bed/Mrs. O’ Leary lit a lantern in her shed/The cow kicked it over, winked its eye, and said/There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." Whether or not the great fire of Chicago was caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow, the incredible tale of what John G. Shortall then did is entirely true. At the height of the fire, he saw that the Chicago Central Courthouse, just across the street, was about to go up in flames. He immediately ran over, got into the building, and stole forty years' worth of abstracts and indexes detailing Chicago's real-estate deals, hiring a couple of passing escaped convicts to help him load his cart. Using what he had stolen, he created the Chicago Title and Trust Company which (as Ross Miller so lucidly describes) eventually made possible the construction of the first skyscrapers.
Analogous disasters, followed by equally nefarious scheming and wheeling-dealing, have befallen many other cities and almost always, when they happen, as in the case of Plymouth (England), the urban planner comes across as a wretched collaborator, full of rhetoric about building a new world whilst carving up the city to keep the powerful happy in their counting-houses. Alan Powers recounts how after the Nazi bombing had flattened Plymouth, an acquiescent Lord Abercrombie, working on behalf of Waldorf Astor (the mayor) and his wife Nancy (ironically, a Nazi sympathiser) completely redesigned the whole city based on a stiffly regimented new plan that completely obliterated what was left of the historic fabric.
Hiroshima was the worst. Carola Hein recounts how on the sunny morning of August 6, 1945 the bomb-aimer of the B-29 "Enola Gay" took aim at a landmark bridge in the city centre. In a split second the whole place was flattened and 50 years later, people were still dying from the effects of the Bomb. The reconstruction of Hiroshima proved to be yet another land-grab by the powerful that Kenzo Tange's memorial buildings did little to conceal.
But there is a misconception in this otherwise well-researched and very readable book about urban tragedy and reconstruction: it confuses the destruction of entire cities (such as the continuous carpet bombing by the Germans of London, all night, every night, for nine months, from 7 Sept 1940 to 11 May 1941) with the destruction of symbolic single building complexes like the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001. For all the godforsaken ugliness of that event, it only caused a few torn threads in Manhattan's grid; the destruction was not city-wide. What followed was a shameless PR and architectural glitz spectacular concealing a tasteless money-making operation. That's the real subtext of this important book: there's an urban greed that thrives on disasters and - dare one say it - benefits from them. In his excellent piece on the Big Apple, Max Page stops just short of saying this out loud.
The incessant assaults on the Qubbat aṣ-Ṣakhra (Dome of the Rock) in Jerusalem are interestingly documented here by the Arab scholar Kanan Makiya, whilst in another essay Milan Prodanovich describes the destruction of the Balkan cities of Dubrovnik, Vukovar, and Belgrade, explaining a whole series of political problems that many of us had not fully understood before.
September 4, 2008
They didn't have to mention 9/11 in comparison with EVERY other major metropolitan disaster in history. Cool facts sprinkled about nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews