Ah! If the docks could be done over again!" The docks will never be done over again, for shipping, but Le Corbusier may get his wish in the form of new recreational piers proposed for Hudson River Park. When the day arrives and they are all in place, surfboards and skates agleam, a part of us may long for the old, slipshod comb. Speaking of which, after September 11, with the sudden need for increased ferry service, a temporary, tentlike ferry dock has been constructed of vinyl and steel rods, and run perpendicular to the midsection of Pier A, into the Hudson River. A vendor has installed a wagon inside the tent to sell hot dogs and pretzels to the waiting travelers. It is pleasing to see the adhoc, provisional genius of the New York docks surfacing again. Before leaving the Battery, I note the rather morbid monument to the Merchant Marines, an academicrealist statue by exPop artist Marisol, which depicts a seemingly fruitless attempt to rescue drowning seamen, who disappear between the incoming tide and emerge from its ebb. W HERE THE BATTERY IS POROUS, GRUNGY, DEMOCRATIC, BATTERY PARK CITY IS CONTROLLED, SELECTIVE, AND POLITE. BATTERY PARK CITY'S SOUTHERN end has an imposing iron gate, with a security guard's sentinel hut, and signs that say DO NOT ENTER. Curiously enough, the gates have been left open in one area, a test of your sense of entitlement: if you feel sufficiently privileged (i.e., some combination of white class vent), you may pass through them into Battery Park City without announcing your presence to the guard, who is there, it would seem, to keep away only people with selfdoubts. BATTERY PARK CITY After 11:00 P.M., however, the gates are closed to all except Battery Park City residents, who in any case tend to regard the waterfront parks next to their apartment buildings as their exclusive preserve. This tension between public space and private enclave pursues you throughout your perusal ot the complex's extensive grounds. 1 hal standards, Battery Park City is a huge success. Delegations ities around the world constantly consult it as a model of waterfront •development-as much for its financing mechanisms as for its built Г 'ronment. Certainly, you have to give the Battery Park City Authority dit for the creation from scratch of a middletouppermiddleclass . borhood that operates in the black, adds to the municipal tax coffers, ontributes mightily to Lower Manhattan's public spaces and waterfront access and is reasonably pleasant to look at-if not architecturally vibrant, then by no means hideously ugly. Many cities would drool at the chance to replicate those results. A native New Yorker like myself, on the other hand, may still regard it as something of a transplanted organ that has never quite taken hold. It still feels like landfill, or an insular theme park, City World. It seems to have everything you would need for a good Manhattan neighborhood, except a pulse. It's a cyborg, a clone, a replicant.