Reflecting Absence or Presence? Public Space and Historical Memory at Ground Zero

Ever since 9/11, the nation has attempted to come to grips with the day and its commemoration. At each relevant site—the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed—memorials are either in place or in progress. Decisions about how to mark the events in which these locations figured, however, have proven anything but unifying for stakeholders. In particular, the people of New York have engaged in debates, often quite heated ones, concerning the future fate of the site of the World Trade Center bombings, an area at the north end of Manhattan’s financial district now known worldwide as Ground Zero. After a design competition in which applicants proposed plans for the land’s future use, a decision was made to go forward with Daniel Libeskind’s master site plan, which featured the Freedom Tower, an underground memorial, and Michael Arad’s plaza design for “Reflecting Absence,” a space of tribute including demarcation of the footprints of the original twin towers. Above all, placemakers at Ground Zero would do well to remain future-minded, taking into consideration how future generations will read the cultural landscape they construct. Will it remain legible, rich, and relevant for visitors fifty or one hundred years from now? This seems the greater stake in how historical memory takes shape at Ground Zero.