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The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

rarehistoricalphotos.com

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Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#101

Post by fsckboy »

jeswin wrote: post #6

The Twin Towers sort of represented the height of American power and prestige, and their fall kicked off the decline. From its peak in the unipolar 90s, a series of expensive misadventures that began after the towers fell diverted critical funds from development (against the backdrop of China's inevitable rise and industrial capacity), into conflict and war far away.

>The Twin Towers sort of represented the height of American power and prestige, and their fall kicked off the decline

no. The twin towers opened in 1973 at a time when NYC was becoming a hollowed out urban core. "New York City never officially declared bankruptcy, but it came very close in 1975 due to severe financial distress. The city faced a fiscal crisis, and through negotiations involving unions and state assistance, it managed to avoid formal bankruptcy" [wikipedia] The buildings were not a commercial success and suffered vacanies and low rents. This is the reason that they were not rebuilt, but rather a smaller building was erected in their place. (one of the problems with tall commercial buildings is that they require a non-trivial amount of elevator square feet in the middle of each tower; this is sq footage that does not make money. if you look at tall buildings being built today, they are almost all residential structures. The require less elevator because the number of people in each apartment is far smaller than the number of people in offices)

New York City only bounced back financially during the Reagan revolution. The Democrat party was dead in the water at that time (similar to today) but it bounced back when Clinton came from out of nowhere (a place called Hope!) to win. but looking back today, Clinton was part of the "hollowing out the economy, sending it to China" (I'm not blaming nor absolving here, that type of idea was popular in economics. It didn't work because it turns out the world is not a nice place where opening up to China and Russia turns out not to open up in the other direction (and also because economic efficiency entails "in efficient markets, economic profits go to zero" and everybody except consumers doesn't like that, and consumers don't like it either on the other side of their ledger, their jobs))

>diverted critical funds from development... into conflict and war far away.

defense spending is not and was not a major factor wrt spending in the economy

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/pub...

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#102

Post by whartung »

netesh wrote: post #12

People who like this might enjoy the amazing film Man On Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIawNRm9NWM

Similarly, there was the Robert Zemeckis movie "The Walk" which is a dramatization of the same event.

After watching, I felt the movie was as much a tribute to the WTC as it was about this wire walker. It's a beautiful film.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#105

Post by bamboozled »

mallowdram wrote: post #89
bamboozled wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question , would it have changed much ?

I suspect so. The case was made in 102 minutes, a NY Times book detailing how 18 people on or above the South Tower's impact zone managed to escape in one of the partially collapsed staircases. Were the stairs built to firecode specs in place in 1966, and not in the flimsy manner expedited by Rockefeller, these stairs would have easily survived intact long enough for many more than 18 to survive.

I guess we're talking about not just brick, but reinforced concrete infused brick ? Anyway I'd be interested to read more about it, thanks.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#106

Post by honkostani »

mindslight wrote: post #44
honkostani wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its fall showed, that cultural relativism and universal liberalism, where just western delusions. Socialism was a dead ideology by then, but this really attacked western values, insofar, that a dried husk of a imperialist religious ideology, revived with western demand for natural resources (oil) would rather engage in cultural warfare upon western values and society then trying to fix itself. It was a ringing bell,…

Some of this rings true, but it makes way too many speculative assertions about the future stated as if they're simply done deals. It also uncritically channels many memes from the destructionist movement presently "leading" the US, rather than acknowledging that movement as part of the " cultural warfare upon western values ".

It is already final. You can not be stuck in medieval times in a world with nuclear weapons and proliferation. Had Israel not taken out the reactors of Iraq and Syria, ISIS and Iraq would have nukes today. Which would result (because non-reasonable actors aka fanatics longing for the afterlife) in a regional exchange.

The middle east is already gone. They will nuke one another, rather sooner then later. And their governments know. They desperately embrace the surveillance state as stabilizer, move there centers of government out of population centers expected to implode in senseless rebellion and anarchy again and again - they want to build cities optimized to escape nuclear retribution, for the day when some of their madmen lob a device at Israel.

They celebrate right now in Ghaza and chant for more violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yaBgGzANc

And that boiling cauldron of madness is wide spread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlsHaRD1k

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#107

Post by mcny »

crote wrote: post #68
squeedles wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that. We seem to have lost sight of the importance of "commercial biodiversity" in the past 40 or more years of continuous M&A concentration. Happily, I saw a little discussion of it in 2008 when the advocates of letting the auto companies fail were pushed back by statistics showing how many second and third tier suppliers would be destroyed. But the fourth tier, the shenzhen / radio alley-type stuff is st…

It's a shame the same logic wasn't applied in maintaining a healthy root-level auto company ecosystem. Having a single megacorp at the top inevitably makes it too big to fail. On the other hand, if there are dozens of smaller car companies, the failure of any one of them is insignificant to the wider ecosystem. A company that knows it is too big to fail will inevitably lead to mismanagement. After all, why bother sav…

I can't think of a way to have dozens of smaller car companies, all competitive and all viable long term without ongoing and adaptive regulation.

With Chevron doctrine dead and Congress struggling to pass a budget, I can't see how it is possible to have any meaningful regulation in the US in the short to mid term.

Even the mainland China model of pitting province and local governments against each other to foster competition might not work in the long term (it is still early days). We already see specialization in provinces which to me indicates that there is a defacto province government who wins auto manufacturers in the long run.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#108

Post by nroets »

fidotron wrote: post #58
nroets wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about looks but efficient use of land: Manhattan was (and still is) the financial capital of the world. It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor use of real estate. Before the Chinese traded electronics in Shenzhen, they traded it in Hong Kong. Yes, as Hong Kong transformed into a financial center, it got rid of the electronics traders.

> It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor use of real estate. So why did they force a sale price on the people there? If as finance people we believe in market forces they should have bought the stores out at market prices. It's another heads-we-win-tails-you-lose situation.

The Wikipedia article hints that it went through the courts. Probably the only legally recognised rights were of the property (real estate) owners and those rights didn't include using the sidewalk as a display area and blasting out announcements on loudspeakers.

So $30,000 in 1962 was probably very generous, but these business owners held the WTC project ransom by demanding unreasonable payouts.

The wikipedia article mentioned that it went to court.

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#109

Post by nixass »

nroets wrote: post #52
fidotron wrote: post #5

Tangentially: > The vision was meant to use the trade facility and urban renewal as tools to clear and revitalize what had become a “commercial slum”. What this refers to is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row#New_York_City Basically you cannot have Akihabara or Shenzhen style electronics markets because the sort of people that built the WTC don't like their chaotic appearance.

It's not about looks but efficient use of land: Manhattan was (and still is) the financial capital of the world. It had the most valuable real estate in the world. Radio Row was a poor use of real estate. Before the Chinese traded electronics in Shenzhen, they traded it in Hong Kong. Yes, as Hong Kong transformed into a financial center, it got rid of the electronics traders.

What is "poor use of real estate"?

Re: The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979

#110

Post by 1718627440 »

mallowdram wrote: post #23

Article neglects that the WTC defied NYFD building codes on egress. If the code was applied as existing in 1966, it would require 8 or 9 fireproof staircases. Instead Rockefeller asked for and got a pass and the building instead had three staircases embedded in six layers of drywall, which is far else than the then standard fireproofing (brick encased). Not only that, they had non-standard transit corridors that wove…

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