BSP Public Lecture: Rebuilding Ground Zero After 9/11

The rebuilding Ground Zero is a story of the power politics among contending government forces and private real estate interests. It is a story of ambition—among all the players with a stake in rebuilding and memorializing the events of 9/11. It is a story about the politics of reconciling aspiration with economic reality—accommodating the various interests swirling about the site without setting priorities among the many aspirations of rebuilding. It is not a story about heroes and villains, rather about people and personalities big and small, all wanting to put their mark on Ground Zero. Finally, it is a story that illuminates the role of symbolic politics. So often modern city building is dismissed as cold-hearted and detached from meaning, but the opposite was true at Ground Zero—where every action was infused with symbolic significance and debated with emotional intensity.