Abstract
The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, in New York City captured the world’s attention. In the years that followed, the world continued to look on as recovery efforts proceeded in fits and starts, as progress was mired by ballooning costs, extending timelines, and frequent conflict. In Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan, Lynne B. Sagalyn provides a clear-eyed and detailed account of rebuilding at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11, demonstrating a deep understanding of the many political forces that shaped the process.
This book serves first and foremost as a historical record of an unprecedented urban redevelopment project. Sagalyn draws from an impressive array of publicly available sources such as news media, published reports, and documents secured through Freedom of Information requests. Equally impressive is the long list of interviews conducted with politicians, journalists, architects, agency officials, developers, and more. Sagalyn meticulously weaves together these data to present the rebuilding at Ground Zero as a cohesive story. Constructed as a six-part chronology, her telling of the story lays bare the complicated relationships between private ambitions, public interests, and the often-murky space of public-private arrangements. Although these relationships influence nearly all urban projects, Sagalyn points out that this project was unique because it “involved a politics of balancing architectural vision, memory, and memorial—on the precise site of the attack in the dense heart of the city’s downtown financial center on land that was among the most valuable in the nation” (p. 134).
The story begins, in “Part I: Predicated to Action,” with a brief history of the World Trade Center complex. Sagalyn explains that from its inception, the World Trade Center complex was a symbol of New York City’s ambition and global dominance and that rebuilding at Ground Zero was essential to maintaining that position. In addition, the ability to recover from the terrorist attack was part of the city’s identity as resilient—a resilience that would be called upon again after Superstorm Sandy would hit the city a decade later while workers were still in the midst of rebuilding.
The final chapters of Part I introduce the primary actors involved in the process of redevelopment. As the book progresses, the number of characters and their various roles expand to an unmanageable level. In anticipation of this problem, Sagalyn has provided a very useful “Dramatis Personae: Positions and Roles during the Storyline of Rebuilding” at the end of the book. The need to frequently reference this aid may leave readers feeling as though they are in a Shakespearean drama rather than an urban redevelopment project.
The opening chapters of “Part II: Tangled Start (2001–2004)” announce the public as a key player in the rebuilding process, not only due to the deep emotional drama of the attack but also as a result of Robert Moses’s notoriously undemocratic reign in earlier decades. Chapters 5 and 6, aptly titled “It’s Our City” and “It’s Our Site,” respectively, capture the public sentiment that would drive the public’s involvement throughout the process.
Parts III to V proceed chronologically and document years 2005 to 2010. These three parts of the book bring the reader deep into the weeds of political maneuvering and conflicting interests. There are many points in this stretch of the book where successful rebuilding is not a foregone conclusion as each step forward seems to yield two steps backward. The amount of money to be spent and the possibility of future earnings are immense, fueling heated contests over control and ownership. In addition, the state and municipal governments continuously jockey for position and authority with each other and with public agencies. All the while, the public exerts its influence at every step, exercising its right to be heard. It is in these sections that Sagalyn’s ability to make sense of an unwieldy number of actors, agendas, and proposals really shines through; she expertly guides the reader through the thorny brambles of this highly charged process.
The well-chosen political cartoons peppered throughout the first five parts of the book perfectly capture public opinion, and often dissent, at various stages of the long rebuilding process and remind the reader that the public was always watching with a ready opinion. This project was not simply another redevelopment project in Lower Manhattan but a symbol imbued with all the emotional weight of 9/11. These cartoons also illustrate the often-outsized power of the media throughout the rebuilding effort. The influence of the media was not limited to New York City. Highly contentious issues, such as the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero, made their way to national and sometimes international notice.
The sixth and final part of the book, “Part VI: Deliverance,” begins with the unveiling of 1 World Trade Center, a visible sign of Lower Manhattan’s triumphant renewal. This triumph is quickly tempered by Sagalyn’s count of what she calls “undisciplined costs,” where costs were not the primary consideration. “Politics superseded budgets” (p. 673). Sagalyn attributes some of this financial trouble to the fragmentation of decision making, a theme that is frequently referenced throughout the rebuilding saga. This fragmentation of authority plagued the project from the beginning, prompting Sagalyn to name one of the early chapters of the book “Who’s in Charge?”
Despite the many setbacks and conflicts, Sagalyn ends by offering a hopeful perspective on one aspect of the rebuilding process. In this case, unlike many other participatory planning efforts, the public would not be relegated to a spectator role. The persistent and often successful efforts of the public lead Sagalyn to conclude that this project “legitimized a new set of voices claiming a right to influence decisions about what should happen on a site transformed by collective tragedy” (p. 722). This optimistic claim may hearten those interested in participatory planning, but it leaves the reader wondering how meaningful public engagement may be achieved outside of history-altering tragedy. Answering the question is not the focus of this book, and attempting to address it would detract from its primary goal—to chronicle rebuilding at Ground Zero.
This work will stand with the likes of Bent Flyvbjerg’s (1998) Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice and Robert Caro’s (1974) The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York in its ability to use a single case to illustrate the politics of power and the power of politics. Like The Power Broker, Caro’s famous portrait of New York City in another era, Power at Ground Zero is in want of neither exacting detail nor political ambition. And like Rationality and Power, this narrative once again demonstrates that power maintains its own logics. Although planning theorists may be left feeling unfulfilled by the book’s lack of direct engagement with theory, Sagalyn’s work adds to the vast scholarship on urban political economies by showing how competing interests exert influence to advance their agendas.
Planning in New York City may be unique; however, Sagalyn’s book is relevant to those interested in planning in Lower Manhattan and beyond. In particular, practitioners working in New York City will find the book’s intricate details of how projects actually unfold—the money, the elected officials, the bureaucracy, and the residents—illuminating.
Sagalyn’s journalistic writing style, devoid of jargon and esoteric concepts, makes this book accessible to planning scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts alike. She conveys the deep emotional trauma felt by the public without succumbing to sentimentality. This tone lends gravitas to Sagalyn’s account, making it more of a historical record than an editorial narrative. Totaling more than 900 pages, its length may discourage all but the most dedicated of readers. Further, its organization and complexity do not lend itself to easy summary or skimming. However, the detail and nuance afforded by its length are exactly what will make this the definitive account of rebuilding after 9/11.