On the morning of September 12 I awoke and remembered immediately what had happened, like a murderer returning to the horror of his altered moral life. I sensed I would, perhaps, never be the same, though not necessarily better. I have never bought the idea that suffering ennobles people. Rather, I expect that this awful experience will add scar tissue to the other atrocities in life, like the death of one's parents, the illnesses of one's children, or the shame of one's nation (My Lai, for example), sorrows over which one has no control but that cause, for all that, the deepest regrets. THE VOID LEFT in the heart of Lower Manhattan by the September 11 tragedy provoked considerable speculation about what should go there. Inevitably the discussion took on awkward tones from the start: the bad taste of dreaming design Utopias or sending resumes around while bodies were still being excavated. Nevertheless, we all knew that after a suitable pause, with predictable wrangling between officials and developers, the area would have to get rebuilt. It was too important to lie fallow. Much of the discussion seemed to me misdirected. How avantgarde the new buildings should be, what architectural brand should go on the site, mattered less to me than what sort of public environment ought to be created there. What would the streetlife be like? How would pedestrians, tourists, workers experience it on the ground? How could we most gracefully integrate the new complex into the surrounding area? Lower Manhattan has a specific character. It is not Midtown, with its gular flatterrain blocks of highrise density. It is the oldest part of New у rk and the "grid" down there (if you can call it that) is more casually ariable the streets smaller and narrower, given to sudden surprises and 'nding perspectives. To the east are the canyons of Wall Street, a dramatic topography in itself, which it might be possible to prolong. Whatever gets built, there already seems a commendable push to extend the eastwest streets river to river, as they originally ran, before the World Trade Center created an obstruction. In many ways the World Trade Center marked a significant break with New York City's spatial form. Its superblock interrupted the circulation of pedestrians; its introverted, malllife retail was hidden from the street; and it buried its transportation modes (the PATH and subway lines) deep within. It may have made an impressive contribution to the skyline, but it was not very effective at street level. The design by Daniel Libeskind and Associates that was finally chosen to replace the World Trade Center, after a bitterly contested architectural competition, may or may not work better at street level, may or may not be severely compromised by the pressures of conflicting clients and a weak economy; it's too early to tell.