“One of the more radical proposals for the multilevel city was developed in New York City by the Regional Plan Association in the late 1960s.…Grand Central Station and Rockefeller Center were described as prototypical multilevel “access trees,” and the intersections of multimodal transit systems were seen as mixing chambers, or social hubs. The proposal identified specific multilevel districts where planners should concentrate multi-use public spaces, and it identified diagonal connectors to link the different zones against the generally orthogonal matrix. In Midtown Manhattan, the authors proposed connecting sites like Grand Central Station, Times Square, Columbus Circle, and Rockefeller Center. This work culminated with the Special Greenwich Street Development District, approved in 1971, which attempted to zone a complex multilevel urban design solution into an area around the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.”
Read the full article “Multilevel Metropolis: On the radical origins and mundane deployment of the urban skyway” in Places Journal. Read RPA’s full 1960s proposals on multilevel design and more in Urban Design Manhattan.