HOUSING in the World Trade Center project? Who ever heard of such an idea?

Actually, anyone who paid attention to the planning concepts presented in 2002 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Five of the six plans identified 130 Liberty Street, where the badly damaged former Deutsche Bank building stands, as the location of "potential residential development."

Though all six concepts were later rejected, the notion of residential development at 130 Liberty Street endured through 2003 in Daniel Libeskind's master site plan.

In other words, despite the surprise that greeted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's recent call for housing at ground zero, he was simply reviving one of the longest-standing ideas about creating a community around the trade center's commercial, memorial and cultural core.

It may not be easy to achieve. But it may not be impossible, either.

"The kind of mixed-use, 24/7 development he's proposing is exactly right," said David Dyssegaard Kallick of the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York, an organization that, by its own description, seeks social justice in post-9/11 redevelopment. "It's what the public, the advocacy groups and the market have favored for four years now. What's puzzling, though, is where he's been these past years."

Read More on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/n...agewanted=print