1. New Yorkers know as well as anyone that great cities are works in progress, but disturbed by disasters provoked by avarice, ideology and politics. Now, New York has seen firsthand how acts of terrorism – a variation of such factors – can affect a great city.

2. But every great city rests, in part, on the broken stones, walls, and foundations of its own past. These foundations are strong enough to recover, like the inhabitants themselves. Leveled with the ground, cities rise again, building on what came before.

3. As New Yorkers set about designing and building whatever will stand in the place of the Twin Towers, they would do well to consult Anthony M. Tung’s Preserving the World’s Great Cities. He wrote it after visiting 22 cities, from Amsterdam to Vienna, from Cairo to Kyoto.

4. This wonderful book mixes well-told tales of urban destruction and renewal, using preservation and planning as the prism through which history is viewed.

5. For example, Tung examines Warsaw’s painstaking postwar restoration of its 17th century Old Town, itself a reconstruction of an older neighborhood destroyed by fire.

6. He also looks at how religious conflict has devastated Jerusalem, and how Berlin recovered from World War II and three decades of being split by the Wall.

7. In each chapter, Tung evaluates varying approaches to preservation, seeking solutions that might conciliate the destruction and loss of historical treasures with development.

8. The earliest attempts at preservation, he tells us, date from the seventh century B. C. in Mesopotamia. Anyone who dared to damage the appearance of the Royal Road of Nineveh was hanged from the roof of his own house.

9. By the fifth century A. D., punishments had eased: in Rome workmen found stripping marble from imperial monuments had their hands cut off. Regardless of these draconian measures, Rome’s physical deterioration was far from being halted.

10. Modern sanctions – some would say because they are not so strict – were not able to prevent the attack on New York either. But New Yorkers will surely rebuild – it does not matter how – what they lost last year.

(Adaptado de “The Fragile Charm of Cities” de David Rocks, in Business Week, 22 de outubro de 2001.)

No parágrafo 2, a expressão “leveled with the ground” equivale a