Thousands of New Yorkers became interested in urban planning because of 9/11, a phenomenon that startled many urban planners. A project of such large scale that had to incorporate the opinions of a vast number of people sparked serious debate on several levels. Some saw the need to build quickly; others wanted to pause and reflect. With emotional appeals arguing both for leaving the site empty and rebuilding the towers exactly, the difficulty of finding consensus was apparent.
The job was given to a newly formed governmental agency, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which had to find a way to produce a tangible plan out of the conceptual debate. New Yorkers roundly rejected its first attempt.
It was over a year after the attacks that an international competition yielded a master plan for the site, and architects began working on the different pieces of the development. But one year ago, New Yorkers still had little idea what a redeveloped Ground Zero would actually look like.
That changed over a ten-week span starting in November 2003, when the three major pieces of architecture for Ground Zero were presented to the public:
Memorial:
Eight finalists out of 5,201 entries in the international competition to design a memorial for Ground Zero were picked in November. The winner, a young architect named Michael Arad, designed two sunken pools for the sites where the Twin Towers had stood, surrounded by an austere plaza. Two weeks after its selection in January, Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker revised the plan to address criticisms that it was creating a cold, bare space. The pools remain the central feature of the plan, but they are now to be surrounded by a lush garden of trees and plantings.
Freedom Tower:
Aside from the memorial, the highlight of Daniel Libeskind's master plan for Ground Zero was a 1,776 foot tower , with an asymmetrical spire meant to evoke the Statue of Liberty. In late December, Libeskind, along with David Childs, an architect working for developer Larry Silverstein, presented the Freedom Tower -- a twisting skyscraper topped by a huge open air space, enclosed in cables, holding huge windmills which would produce 20 percent of the building's energy. While the two men claimed to have worked together, the building was much larger than Libeskind's original vision, and many believed Libeskind had been sidelined in its design.
Transportation Hub:
While both the Freedom Tower and the memorial have had their share of critics, the transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava has been met with near unanimous acclaim. Calatrava presented his building - a steel and glass structure flanked by two enormous glass wings that move to allow the roof to open - in January.
With the major elements of the master plan firmed up, the symbolic beginning to construction at Ground Zero took place on July 4, when the cornerstone to the Freedom Tower was put in place at Ground Zero. Governor George Pataki - who has adopted the speedy rebuilding of the site as a priority of his administration - heralded the event as the start of the next stage in the site's rebirth. But skeptics see troubling uncertainty in the site's future.
Libeskind's master plan, some say, has lost the primacy that it held soon after winning the international competition to design the site. Different architects have chipped away at the plan, replacing some of its key elements with their own visions as they design portions of it. Designs for the two planned cultural buildings, to be decided upon soon, could continue to move away from the plan. Libeskind himself is competing to design one of these buildings, which would, presumably, keep in line with his original vision.
Whether architectural changes are an evolution of erosion of Libeskind's plan is a point of debate, and even if the architect is losing traction it doesn't pose a fundamental threat to the site. More dangerous, some worry, is the increasing lack of clarity about how Ground Zero's development will be paid for.
In May, a court decision over how much insurance money Larry Silverstein will get because of 9/11 dealt the developer a big blow. Silverstein, who was seeking about $7.1 billion in insurance funds, suddenly would get no more than $4.5 billion. He said that the court verdict would not limit his ability to redevelop Ground Zero; the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the government agency in charge of the redevelopment, backed his claim. Others expressed skepticism that Silverstein would be able to pay for the entire site's development.
The financing for the major elements of the plan - the Freedom Tower, the memorial, the transportation hub, and the cultural buildings - will be unaffected by the lawsuit. But when the other four office towers will be built, and whether it will be Silverstein who builds them, is in doubt. Some don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.
Next Page: Transportation
New York's economy had already been in recession for nine months by the time the Twin Towers were attacked. While it is difficult to separate the economic impact of the attack itself from the wider economic downturn, it is clear that 9/11 had a serious effect on the city's economy.
The Partnership for New York City, a business organization in the city, recently estimated that the city suffered an $87 billion economic loss because of the attacks.
In total, the city's tax revenue dropped $1.5 billion, or about 6.4 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2002; personal income tax revenues dropped $1.2 billion, or about 26 percent over the same period. New Yorkers lost $2.8 billion in wages. And when the city's tax revenue rose above pre 9/11 levels in fiscal 2003, it had as much to do with the mayor's property tax hike in November 2002 as it did with a general economic recovery.
Lower Manhattan suffered most severely. Small retail businesses, which lost customers as foot traffic in the area declined and generally have more trouble than larger businesses taking losses, were hit especially hard. But the impact of the attack spread across the city. The outer boroughs, especially Queens with its heavy reliance on its airports, all lost jobs in the wake of the attacks.
In late 2003, the city pulled out of a two-and-a-half year recession but signs of recovery remain mixed. Eighty percent of jobs lost due to 9/11 have returned to the city, but the unemployment rate remains above pre 9/11 levels. According to the city's tourism bureau, in 2003 more visitors came to New York than ever before, even as the number of international visitors was the lowest number since records have been kept.
Many feared that after 9/11 businesses would be eager to leave Manhattan, or at least reluctant to start large new operations in the city. Indeed, few companies have expressed interest in the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site. But across the street, buoyed by federal Liberty Bonds designed to encourage development in the city, Goldman Saks is planning a new office tower. The New York Times and Bank of America are also using Liberty Bonds to construct office towers in midtown.
But the flow of jobs to New Jersey, one that existed before 9/11, has not ceased. Since the attacks, JP Morgan Chase, UBS Financial Services, and Citigroup, are among the companies that have crossed the river. While this has arguably made the financial system less vulnerable to terrorist attacks, it has also taken a significant amount of tax revenue from the city's coffers.
Meanwhile, the ongoing threat of terrorism has made doing business in the city more expensive. The Partnership for New York City estimates that major downtown businesses are spending up to ten times as much on insurance and security than they were before 9/11, even if, as a New York Times article recently reported, many companies are not actually paying for the plans that they draw up.
For more, see the Economic Rebuilding section of Rebuilding
Next Page: Federal Aid
A new sense of urgency and an influx of $4.55 billion in federal funding specifically earmarked for transportation has resulted in a wealth of ideas about transforming the way that people get around in lower Manhattan.
9/11 inspired New Yorkers to discuss ambitious transportation projects. In the past years, two connected stations in and around Ground Zero have been designed. The Ground Zero transportation hub will replace the PATH station that was destroyed.
Though underground walkways, the station will also connect to a new Fulton Street Subway Station, which itself will connect 12 subway lines that spread about 1,000 feet from east to west. The $750 million Fulton Street Station is scheduled for completion by 2007; the $2 billion transportation hub by 2009. Federal rebuilding funding will be used to fund both projects.
Other plans do not have such a clear future. Governor George Pataki has alternately spoken of using the money to bury West Street - a plan from which he has recently retreated - or to build a tunnel underneath the East River, connecting lower Manhattan to the Long Island Railroad and JFK International Airport.
The rail link plan got a boost recently when President Bush said that he supported converting unused tax incentives into cash for such a project. Congress has yet to approve the plan, but if it does, it will be a boon for the city, as it seemed unlikely that it would have been able to use the incentives themselves.
For more, see the Transportation section of Rebuilding
Next Page: Economic Impact