ABSTRACT
The 11 September 2001 destruction of Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center
rapidly rekindled the long-standing debate over the viability and desirability of
the superblock as an urban type. Condemnations forcefully outnumbered
endorsements: “Break up the 16-acre Trade Center superblock” was the dis-
missive refrain of many a newspaper editorial. “Restore the traditional street
grid so as to restore neighborhoods [. . . and] espouse community”1 and other
such suggestions directly echoed the urban critiques penned by urban advo-
cate Jane Jacobs 43 years ago when she took on Lewis Mumford, Clarence
Stein, Henry Wright, and the rest of the Garden City movement in The Death
and Life of Great American Cities: “The Garden City planners and their ever
increasing following among housing reformers, students and architects,”
Jacobs complained, “were indefatigably popularizing the ideas of the super-
block, the project neighborhood, the unchangeable plan, and grass, grass,
grass; what is more they were successfully establishing such attributes as the
hallmarks of humane, socially responsible, functional high-minded planning.”2
