ABSTRACT
The September 11, 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 dismissive 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 advocate 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
