To The Editor:We agree with many of the general sentiments presented by Amy Chin in her Progress Report on Chinatown (Nov. 18 - 24, Progress Report, "Chinatown begins to build on the unity that came after 9/11). There has been considerable effort by local residents and organizations to address the problems caused by 9/11. The Chinatown Partnership does represent an excellent opportunity to unite and empower Chinatown and move it forward to meet the challenges that lie ahead.Disturbing though is the suggestion that Chinatown's post-9/11 problems were somehow due to its "insular nature." Chinatown's post-9/11 problems can almost exclusively be traced back to access or the lack of it. Street closures and the resulting inability to make and take deliveries for months after 9/11 caused many businesses, especially our garment factories, to close or to move out of Chinatown. To say that something innately cultural to Chinatown has prevented recovery essentially "blames the victim" and, more importantly, deflects attention away from the root causes of Chinatown's problems.Nearly as disturbing is Amy's advice on the LowerManhattan.info Web site that tells visitors that, because of our horse and buggy streets, visitors' cars should be left "on the far sides of bridges and tunnels, or near subway stations uptown". We checked the Web site of the Downtown Alliance, and nowhere do they advocate that visitors "leave their cars home" when visiting Lower Manhattan. Nor do we hear businesses in Tribeca advertising their streets as "car unfriendly." The LowerManhattan.info Web site does additionally suggest that commuters either carpool or consider mass transit — appropriate advice directed at commuters since a recent report issued by Transportation Alternatives found that as of the 2000 Census, nearly half of all government employees in Lower Manhattan commute to work by car. The number has surely risen since 9/11. The Chinatown Partnership would do better to concentrate on solving the problem of illegal placard parking that blocks our fire hydrants and fire lanes, blocks disabled access to M.T.A. buses, and takes street parking spaces away from Lower Manhattan's local residents and businesses. As active participants in the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative's surveys and forums over the past four years, we realize that R.C.I.'s groundbreaking post-9/11 Chinatown survey was a major step in identifying important issues for Chinatown. The Chinatown Partnership represents an excellent opportunity for uniting the residents and businesses of Chinatown behind a common goal of renaissance. But we remind R.C.I. and the Chinatown Partnership that when we participated in the survey, we did not appoint R.C.I. to represent us in resolving the issues that were identified. We hope and expect that R.C.I. and the Chinatown Partnership will continue to work with us and other local residents to first accurately identify and then address the root problems that face the local residents and businesses of Chinatown and Lower Manhattan.