There should be a vibrant, 24-hour community of people who live, work, play and thrive in Lower Manhattan.
From jungle-clad mountains scattered with ancient pagodas, to its vibrant 24-hour cities, China is one of the most diverse and fascinating countries on the planet.
Now questions are being raised about whether the plans to make the financial district a vibrant 24-hour community will ever be fully realized.
"I had a lot of skepticism about whether the World Trade Center area could be recreated as a vibrant, 24-hour place," said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the City University of New York's Center for Urban Research.
"It's almost a small town within a county, a vibrant 24-hour community with the ambience of Manhattan right in the heart of Suffolk," said Dr. Pearl Kamer, a consulting economist on the project.
With free-spirited cities providing a vibrant 24-hour lifestyle, spectacularly varied landscapes, fairytale castles, magical forests, a good standard of living and, of course, a relatively robust economy, Germany has plenty going for it.
According to the city's rezoning proposal, the Long Island City location "is envisioned as a vibrant, 24-hour pedestrian-oriented" central business district that would include "manufacturing, office and residential uses".
And with loft and other residential spaces available nearby, they create the kind of vibrant, 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week environment sought by dot-com employees.
"There is a common feeling of all the people down here," he said, "that after all the years that this was talked about as a vibrant 24-hour community, and a lot of people came down here seeking that, that it really was not".
New development is abundant in Lower Manhattan, and buyers are counting on TriBeCa and the Financial District's ability to transition from a 9-to-5 neighborhood to a vibrant 24-hour one.
What made the Mavericks' 25th anniversary tour stop Tuesday at the Belly Up in Solana Beach all the more impressive was that the heart and soul of the richly vibrant 2½-hour show wasn't vintage songs from the group's first go-round in the 1980s and '90s but the sterling material from its latest album.
