Plurality in Place: Activiating Public Spheres and Public Spaces in Seattle

The redevelopment of Lower Manhattan has shown that urban design—as well as the economics, politics, and drama that surround and inform it—can capture wide public attention. Several trade journals have proclaimed that the World Trade Center design competition has placed architecture and planning on the popular cultural radar screen. The World Trade Center project has become the public’s project. Local, regional, national, and international publics have realized that this small corner of New York City will be called upon to represent not only the city’s identity, but also the nation’s and the globe’s. The new World Trade Center will have to reflect the ethos and ideologies of a newly awakened world. Global publics follow the design process and form opinions, however uninformed, on the proposals. Design journal editors have also challenged design professionals to ask themselves whether they want such public attention to be measured as public opinion (as nothing more than a popularity contest: a charmed public voting for the design team with the best public relations campaign) or whether they want to transform that public attention into meaningful public engagement with and input into the process of design. And this decision raises a host of questions. Why should those publics be uninformed about design, and how could they become informed? Could such design and development projects give rise to a “public sphere” despite their highly technical and political nature? And if so, who would be included in that public sphere, and how should their input be weighted and evaluated? Further, how can designed and developed spaces foster the growth of (and sustain) public spheres? How can a public see itself reflected in its physical spaces, and how can those representative spaces become actual sites for congregation to further the development of public spheres