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In the decade following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site took many turns while the rest of the city underwent a building boom. Timeline continues on the next page...

In the decade following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site took many turns while the rest of the city underwent a building boom. From top of first page: Photo ' Scott Frances/ESTO, photo courtesy Municipal Art Society, photo by Flickr user Sleepybis, phot ' Michael Rieger/FEMA, photo courtesy CSU Archives/Everett Collection, photo ' Chuck Choi, Photo ' Albert Vecerka/ESTO, photo courtesy Moynihan Station Development Corporation, photo courtesy Spencer Thomas, photo ' Iwan Baan, photo by James Ewing, photo by Asad Syrkett Gregory Wessner is exhibitions director at the Architectural League. The

Midtown Manhattan Ateliers Jean Nouvel Status: Revised design under review Image courtesy Hines In early 2007, Hines purchased an empty lot on West 53rd Street from the Museum of Modern Art for $125 million. Soon after, the mega-developer unveiled its design for the 17,000-square-foot site: a slender, 75-story steel-framed skyscraper (pictured above) by French architect Jean Nouvel. Plans for 53 West 53rd, more commonly known as Tower Verre or the MoMA Tower, included 120 condominiums, a 100-room hotel, a restaurant, and 50,000 square feet of gallery space for MoMA. Most notably, the building was slated to rise 1,250 feet, which

Fort Greene, Brooklyn Various firms Status: Under construction Image courtesy H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture In 2000, the city drew back the curtain on its plans to develop a cultural district around the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), a thriving performing arts center established in 1861. The 6-acre master plan, conceived by Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Diller Scofidio + Renfro (who were both replaced by WORKac in 2005), called for performance venues, mixed-income housing, and ample public space. The $650 million endeavor was to be financed through public and private dollars, with BAM Local Development Corporation, a nonprofit planning group,

Manhattanville, Manhattan Various firms Status: Under Construction Photo © Columbia University Columbia university is pressing ahead with its 17-acre expansion into Manhattanville, a West Harlem neighborhood just north of the school's main 32-acre campus in Morningside Heights. Preconstruction work on the $6.3 billion project began in 2008, with completion of the first building expected in 2016. Photo © Columbia University The project has faced considerable opposition since it was proposed. In 2003, Columbia assembled a star-studded cast ' Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and James Corner Field Operations ' to design the master plan. Their scheme,

Staten Island James Corner Field Operations Status: Under construction Image courtesy James Corner Field Operations/City of New York In 1948, the City of New York opened the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill along a marshy shore of Staten Island. By 1955, it was the world’s largest waste depository — a claim to fame that infuriated the borough’s residents, who lobbied fiercely to close the stinky dump. At its peak, 29,000 tons of trash arrived daily. Image courtesy courtesy James Corner Field Operations/City of New York Environmental regulations ultimately led to the landfill’s closure in 2001. That same year, the city put

New York Harbor Team led by West 8 Status: Under environmental review Photo © A Frieden In one sense, Governors Island is treasured real estate: Located a half-mile from Manhattan's southern tip, the 172-acre island, a former military base, offers stunning panoramic views of New York City and its waterways. But the tree-dotted island lacks sufficient infrastructure (no potable water, for starters) and can only be reached by boat. Moreover, its land deed prohibits residential development. Photo © Jerry L. Thompson (Top); Courtesy West 8 Team (Bottom) In 2006, the city and state launched a competition that asked designers to

Midtown Manhattan, West Side Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates Status: Awaiting tenant commitments Image courtesy dbox City officials and developers have long imagined a dazzling future for the airspace over the gritty, 26-acre West Side Rail Yard, near Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan. Starting in the late 1990s, the city proposed constructing a platform over the below-grade portion of the rail yard and building a stadium on the site for the New York Yankees. That initiative, along with succeeding plans to build arenas for the New York Jets and 2012 Olympics, never came to fruition. The city eventually shifted gears and

Roughly since the election of Andrew Jackson, American politicians have also been brands, competing for mindshare in the markets for “liberal blowhard,” say, or “Second Amendment crank.” In this field Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York owns the trademark on “apolitical technocrat,” a Northeastern niche market in which the absence of charisma is, like the hand-printed label on a jar of farmer's market jam, a signifier of authenticity. Bloomberg’s New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City, by Julian Brash. University of Georgia Press, 2011, 344 pages, $25. But the secretive, imperious Bloomberg is also a billionaire whose fortune

Site Plan Illustration: Michael Newhouse Click the image above to view components of the new World Trade center as well as a section drawing of the site. To create the original World Trade Center, the Downtown Lower Manhattan Development Association and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed five streets and carved out a 16-acre superblock in the first half of the 1960s. The new WTC is reinserting some of those lost streets in an effort to better connect the complex with the rest of Lower Manhattan. While two towers are rising aboveground and the memorial is