Battery Park City and the Battle Over West Street: How Space Affects Social Relations
Greg Smithsimon
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January 10, 2004
Abstract:
Battery Park City residents’ debates over redevelopment plans for the adjacent World Trade Center site illustrate
ways in which the design of physical spaces affects social relations. In two cases, residents took surprising positions
(opposing covering a highway with green space, and supporting plans for a tourist bus depot when it was built near
their homes, but opposing it if it was further away) that can only be understood by appreciating the social role of
concrete elements like neighborhood design and physical barriers.
Public debates over the redevelopment plans for the World Trade Center area required people to
articulate their conception of public space, and allowed me to test whether the design of space
affects social relations. In particular, my participant observation of these debates between July
2002 and January 2003 allowed me to consider whether the geographic isolation and exclusive
design of Battery Park City affected residents’ positions on redevelopment issues.
I soon found that there were elements of the redevelopment plan that had become foci of
activism, organizing, and contention in Battery Park City. Most of these dealt directly with
public space. I’ve selected two examples of political debates in the redevelopment project to
demonstrate how space affects social relations. In the first, residents have for some time been
organizing to oppose the replacement of West Street, an at-grade road with six to ten lanes, with
a tunnel for some part of it length along the eastern boundary of Battery Park City. The City,
State, and State Department of Transportation justify the project as needed to better connect
Battery Park City to the rest of the City. The debate has been protracted and broadly discussed
enough to draw out the significant but complex relationship of the built environment to residents’
positions on neighborhood issues. In the second case, the need for, and location of, a parking
garage to accommodate the tour buses anticipated at the World Trade Center memorial has
become an emotionally volatile issue and the subject of extended debate and action, after it was
first proposed to be built on the footprints of the two towers, and has subsequently (though not
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