[Mr Downtown]

Dearborn Park's superblocks and big sites is what I'm trying to avoid. Even more relevant is the area just west of DP1, which was planned in the 1990s as "LaSalle Park." With no commitment to a small-block street grid, compromise after compromise was made, and it got parceled out into a series of objects on cul-de-sacs: Amli, some more Amli, a Target store, the antiurban Roosevelt Collection, the isolated British School, an Alta highrise with too much parking and land around it.

Battery Park City is probably the best example we have of how to extend a traditional American city fabric, rather than always thinking we're the generation who can ignore 3000 years of experience and invent urbanism anew.