When the World Trade Towers in New York City were erected at the Hudson's edge, they led the way to a real estate boom that was truly astonishing. Divided We Stand reveals the coming together and eruption of four volatile elements: super-tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. The Trade Center serves as a potent symbol of the disastrous consequences of undemocratic planning and development. This book is a history of that skyscraping ambition and the impact it had on New York and international life. It is a portrait of a building complex that lives at the convergence point of social and economic realities central not only to New York City but to all industrial cities and suburbs. A meticulously researched historical account based on primary documents, Divided We Stand is a contemporary indictment of the prevailing urban order in the spirit of Jane Jacobs's mid-century classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

When the World Trade Center was erected at the Hudson River's edge, it forever changed the character of the American city. In Divided We Stand, cultural critic Eric Darton chronicles the life of this billion-dollar building, using it as a lens through which to view the broader twentieth-century trend toward urbanized, global culture. Drawing on political and social history, Darton pioneers a new hybrid genre of architectural biography, revealing the convergence of four volatile elements in contemporary urban life: super tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. Now with a new introduction and afterword, Divided We Stand remains the definitive work on the birth and life of the World Trade Center.