World Trade Center rebuilding controversy

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One proposal for rebuilt Twin Towers

The controversy surrounding the reconstruction of the World Trade Center stems from the plans to rebuild the former twin towers of the original World Trade Center in New York City, United States. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC) was formed after the September 11 attacks to plan the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan and distribute nearly $10 billion in federal funds aimed at rescuing downtown Manhattan. Currently under construction at the site is the 1,776 ft (541 m) 1 World Trade Center and several smaller buildings. Individuals such as architectural model-maker Kenneth Gardner make a distinction between constructing a new complex on the site of the former World Trade Center and "rebuilding" the Twin Towers with his proposed Twin Towers II design.

Grassroots reaction

Rebuilding guidelines were formulated by the LMDC that required the replacement of all commercial space and the street grid before the construction of the original complex. Six plans published in July 2002 were met with mixed results. The option of reconstructing the Twin Towers was not considered. Silverstein representatives subscribed to the theory that new office buildings with more than 70 floors would create short- to medium-term vacancies while rebuilding the towers. There was also the call by a number of civic planners to restore the pre-World Trade Center street grid. Chief architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill publicly denounced the original plan and described the towers and the "superblock" as out of place, not conducive to public-space activity and lacking in aesthetics.

During the planning process newspaper polls, letters to the editor, as well as the feedback forms on the LMDC "Listening to the People" initiative and on its website suggested that there was a bloc of people who advocated restoration of the former towers, arguing it was a moral imperative and an indispensable act of counter-terrorism. After an initial competition was met with unfavorable reaction the LMDC was forced to restart the design process almost from scratch leaving in place essentially the same guidelines that had been repudiated the first time. Seven new designs were published and narrowed down to two candidates: one from Studio Daniel Libeskind and one from THINK Team which was the closest of the seven to evoke the fallen towers.

Criticism of progress

The following interview may contain swearing.

Following the six-year anniversary of the attacks, comedian Bill Maher said:

We may never know what the World Trade Center meant to our enemies, but our inability to build anything on the site in six years symbolizes our national head-up-the-***. You know, it took two years to build the Eiffel Tower. In the 1880s. By hand. Of course we can't rebuild Iraq. We can't get **** done in SoHo!

In the "Ground Zero" episode of the Showtime television series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Penn & Teller criticize the bureaucracy of the LMDC officials involved and list the multiple architectural setbacks in the initial design plans for the site.

The base of the 1 World Trade Center (previously known as Freedom Tower) has also been a source of controversy, as it was fortified because of security concerns. A number of critics (notably Derek Murdoch in the National Review) have suggested that it is alienating and dull, and reflects a sense of fear rather than freedom, leading them to dub the project "the Fear Tower". Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the New York Times, calls the tower base decorations a "grotesque attempt to disguise its underlying paranoia."