WTC Plans: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
Joseph Dolman of New York Newsday laments:

So where's the catalyst that will give shape to a vibrant new downtown? Where's the spark that will create a community of apartments, offices, tourist amenities and top-of-the-line cultural and educational institutions? Where's the glimmer of genius that can stitch together a serendipitous neighborhood of 20-something software jockeys and 50-something Wall Street thunderbolt tossers who can live happily forever after side by side?

It won't be found on yesterday's menu of plans. Those blueprints look like a rush job, drawn up in part to help out a governor - George Pataki - who's running hard for re-election and worried that people might think he's not moving fast enough. It appears the governor's folks in the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority have just reshuffled the World Trade Center's components and dealt them again. That was a losing formula for lower Manhattan when it first materialized in the 1960s - and it's an infinitely worse scenario now.