The Architecture of Hope

There are those who would look at the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center and see the end of cities as we've known them. But Daniel Patrick Moynihan wouldn't be one of them.

The four-term senator -- a fervent advocate of cities, with a particular passion for New York, his hometown -- spoke recently at a conference in Boston for leading city planners, developers, and architects. His message: Don't give up on cities, don't give in to fear, and find a way to begin rebuilding New York quickly to show the world that the United States will not be intimidated. The shortest route to that goal, he said, is the rehabilitation of Penn Station.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Moynihan had been invited to speak to the Urban Land Institute conference long before the cataclysm in lower Manhattan. But the 3,600 men and women who attended the convention could think of little else than the attack on the world's largest office buildings and the pall cast over the future of urban development caused by the towers' collapse. The attendees needed guidance, perspective, reassurance.

They needed Dan Moynihan.

Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for the New Yorker, who has written some of the most memorable coverage of the impact of September 11 on New York, moderated a discussion with Moynihan on the future of the city.

At the risk of sounding sentimental, watching them was like being in the stands for a historic matchup between two sports teams at the top of their games -- the Yankees versus the Mets in game five of the subway series.

There could be little doubt about the theme of the conversation, and Goldberger's first question was fast, hard, and right down the middle: "You've devoted much of your life to helping people in public life understand the value of cities, the joy people take in physically being together. Are we at risk now of losing that?"

"We're in Boston, so we must start with Aristotle," said Moynihan, a master of erudite surprise. "Aristotle calls attention to Hippodamus of Melitus, who was the father of city planning. He devised the grid pattern for urban spaces. He was also the author of the first ideal constitution, a constitution that presumed virtue and that hopefully instilled virtue in its citizens."

As the audience struggled to figure out where he was heading, Moynihan squared to his theme: "When the great commercial center of Corinth was threatened by an advancing army, Hippodamus told the Corinthians to build a wall. He did not say, Flee. He did not say, Scatter. He said, Concentrate and defend. And that's what we have to do now. It is no accident that the symbols that were attacked by the terrorists were the symbols of a high urban civilization."

But, Goldberger pointed out, things have changed a lot since ancient Corinth, and the historical model may no longer apply. "The Corinthians had no other possible way to live and do business," he said. "But technology has been pushing us away from density and centralization." With email and computer networks, people don't need to live in cities to do business. "Doesn't that make the city harder to defend since there are alternatives?" he asked.

"There was an alternative in ancient Greece," Moynihan countered. "You could be a goatherd. But you would not be a citizen of Corinth or Athens or Sparta." As communications improved, he argued, cities have become more important, more necessary, and more compact. "Something happens when people are together that doesn't happen when they are dispersed," he said. "That's the experience of humankind.

"This is not a moment to be intimidated," Moynihan went on. "It's worth keeping in mind how the British behaved during the Blitz. They kept those theaters and music halls going the whole time. People didn't change their way of life. The only way these terrorists can win is to change the way we live. And we live in cities."

The audience signaled its agreement with enthusiastic applause.

The power of place is profound, Moynihan continued, on a roll now. "Abraham Lincoln understood that when he kept the construction of the U.S. Capitol going during the Civil War. He said that the work of building must go on, so people know the Union will go on. And it did. And they didn't scatter."

"But," said Goldberger, pushing his point, "there was no easy suburban Internet-access option available in business in 1860 either."

"Lincoln could have made his way north, or west to Illinois," Moynihan countered. "He didn't. And that was a symbol."

Still, Moynihan and Goldberger agreed that the attacks have probably changed some of the fundamental design principles for American cities.