I agree with Felix that I don’t really like any of the proposals; they remind me too much of Canberra, or Brasilia–mainly because of the unimaginative repetitive blandness these towers exhude. But there are some elements I like, that I hope they will keep in the final proposal:

I like the fact that all proposals reconstitute Greenwich street, a portion of which was erased when the WTC was built in the early 70s. It opens up the whole area, and connects Tribeca to the financial district in a much more organic fashion.

I like the idea of a tunnel for most traffic on West street, with green replacing concrete. This also opens up the whole World Financial Center area to the rest of the city, without the need to commute over an 8-lane highway via one of three pedestrian bridges as was the case before.

I like demolishing the huge damaged black building on the Southern end of the WTC site, as the proposals suggest. I believe it is the Deutsche Bank building, and it is ugly.

But I do not like the Memorial Square proposal Felix fancies. I know he only likes it because he is a sucker for Opera. My problem with it is that the square is surrounded by a “multi-level public arcade” which in effect visually cuts off the whole space from the rest of the city. And these public arcades are reminiscent of the well-intentioned public spaces constructed in the 60s that proved way larger than human scale, and which we shunned.

The proposals are disappointing. Where is our Guggenheim Bilbao? Our Sydney Opera House? Our Sagrada Familia? (Great caption, by the way, to the Sagrada Familia photo.)