While walking the streets around the 9/11 memorial last week in New York, we had an appreciation of how tightly packed in the buildings are there. In the video footage of 9/11, it seems like people had wider streets and plenty of sidewalks to run away from the collapsing towers.

But the space is tiny, tiny and packed with buildings and as we walked, we tried to imagine how we could ever run away from a building above that was collapsing. The memorial, as our New York architect nephew pointed out, opened up space in the crowded downtown Manhattan area that can never be filled in again. There are trees and the amazing pools and waterfalls and benches to sit upon.

But all around the memorial, new construction is going up. It will close in the area once more, but never in the same way again.

(Tony Wadden photo)

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