R.DOT: Organization

Rebuild Downtown Our Town (R.Dot) is the voice of lower Manhattan.

The R.Dot coalition is comprised of Lower Manhattan residents, businesses, community and business associations, artists, colleges, professionals, architects, designers together with public officials and appointees. They meet regularly to discuss, research, and develop a collective vision that can shape our new downtown. Member groups of R.Dot represent the voices of thousands of people who have been directly affected by the destruction of the World Trade Towers.

R.Dot’s vision is to create a 21st century living, working, sustainable environment that symbolizes the American spirit and its humanistic values; honors our dead; reflects our modern cultural, technological, economic and social thought, our global financial and economic leadership, and a multicultural society.

The coalition’s objective is to support an imaginative, sustainable design that creates the possibility of a DIVerse, inclusive, 24-hour residential and business community. The design should attract and serve people who provide the intellectual, entrepreneurial, creative and technological capabilities that empower New York City’s economy and the richness of its multi-cultural life. R.Dot strongly supports the design of a fitting memorial to all those who lost their lives and those who have been irrevocably changed by the tragedy on September 11.

R.Dot’s mission is to represent the active voice concerned with Lower Manhattan in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center area; to promote its spiritual revitalization and economic recovery; and to assure that our collective vision reaches the media, the public, and the decision makers who have the power to create the new reality.

R.Dot is led by architect Beverly Willis, FAIA, Director of the Architecture Research Institute; Metropolis Magazine Editor-in-Chief Susan Szenasy.