Economics would put the WTC footprint in such a developed city into the realm of dollars-per-square-millimeter....and with land values such as that, nothing cost-wise short of the Original towers would be economically viable. That means it's gotta be 'big' [tall], preferably more so than the previous, to re-establish its prominence in the World Scale of Phalluses....so it obviously becomes a 'target' again, but with clever form/design, can be made 'survivable'.
When the Towers were built originally, they conformed to a code of building standard which has never been accepted in Australia, for example, where a similar construction method was proposed for a contemporary building here in Melbourne, but was flatly rejected...purely for fire-standards. Around 1970, there was a high-rise residential tower in England where one flat had a gas explosion, blowing out one wall, and like a deck of cards, the tower disassembled itself, along with a few hundred tenants. Panic spread through the Architecture/Building fraternity in Aus because we, too had these 'Housing Commission' towers, but, being from 'Down-under' we did things a bit different....linking the pre-cast concrete panels with re-inforced concrete 'joints' - a sort of continuous weld, rather than a simple bolting method...and a quarter scale model was built [it was 4 storeys tall]..to test wind stability, but after the disaster in the UK, it was to test equivalent explosion-damage as well...
The way the WTC mk.2 is set-up, it certainly looks like a similar occurence as Sep 11 would be highly survivable.....though the 'Bug-zapper' is about as corny as you can get...
