Even as the past week has seen some trechantcommentary that seems to be a harbinger of a change in public discourse over the continued dissappointment that is the redevelopment of the WTC site, it also has an air of resignation — the last gasp of an angry but fatigued opposition that will now pass into browbeaten silence. At times, the anger feels like an exercise: something we were told once to do, and now dutifully execute, even as it seems like the anger is manufactured for its own sake.
Certainly, this is the explanation those who are running the show now would prefer to be the accepted wisdom. Disconnecting the cause of our anger attenuates it’s efficacy. With the practical and symbolic efforts failing on so many levels, it also requires a rather elaborate effort to synthesize the magintude of the failure. The history of opposition to large-scale urban development has either been wholesale rejection, or tactical efforts to make the least bad possible. There has been very little acceptance of the argument that nothing should be built, at least not for a long while, allowing for more reflection. So we make small points, over and over, in hopes that there is a tacit recongnition that they are legitimate, and perhaps worthy of negotiation, as the voices who at one time weren’t overwhelming, but certainly numerious, found the entire redevelopment plan ill-conceived.
While doing research on yet another small corner of dissent, I came across this, an account by Leslie Gill of her experience on September 11, delivered just two weeks after at a event at the Architectural League (there are a number of others, including Peter Wheelwright, who lost his home and office that day). My memories — many of them mediated through the same lens of those near and not so — do not register with great frequency. I willifully avoid the site, mostly in small protest against the decisions made to date. And though I do not avoid anything else that might evoke memories, I do not seek them out, perhaps in fear of the day that I look upon something, an image, a narrative, and the moment passes, undifferentiated. The degree to which is does not is also shocking, a horrifying reminder of the power of memory and how it can and should shape our commitment to the future. My memories are only those of an ‘average’ New Yorker that day; there are one or two details that might stand out, but given the number of people and the magnitude of the event, they are hardly singular. But living them while reading Gill’s narrative, they remind me both how unthinkable that day was, and how unthinking our response now seems.
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On the state of our rebuilding, briefly.
Even as the past week has seen some trechant commentary that seems to be a harbinger of a change in public discourse over the continued dissappointment that is the redevelopment of the WTC site, it also has an air of resignation — the last gasp of an angry but fatigued opposition that will now pass into browbeaten silence. At times, the anger feels like an exercise: something we were told once to do, and now dutifully execute, even as it seems like the anger is manufactured for its own sake.
Certainly, this is the explanation those who are running the show now would prefer to be the accepted wisdom. Disconnecting the cause of our anger attenuates it’s efficacy. With the practical and symbolic efforts failing on so many levels, it also requires a rather elaborate effort to synthesize the magintude of the failure. The history of opposition to large-scale urban development has either been wholesale rejection, or tactical efforts to make the least bad possible. There has been very little acceptance of the argument that nothing should be built, at least not for a long while, allowing for more reflection. So we make small points, over and over, in hopes that there is a tacit recongnition that they are legitimate, and perhaps worthy of negotiation, as the voices who at one time weren’t overwhelming, but certainly numerious, found the entire redevelopment plan ill-conceived. While doing research on yet another small corner of dissent, I came across this, an account by Leslie Gill of her experience on September 11, delivered just two weeks after at a event at the Architectural League (there are a number of others, including Peter Wheelwright, who lost his home and office that day). My memories — many of them mediated through the same lens of those near and not so — do not register with great frequency. I willifully avoid the site, mostly in small protest against the decisions made to date. And though I do not avoid anything else that might evoke memories, I do not seek them out, perhaps in fear of the day that I look upon something, an image, a narrative, and the moment passes, undifferentiated. The degree to which is does not is also shocking, a horrifying reminder of the power of memory and how it can and should shape our commitment to the future. My memories are only those of an ‘average’ New Yorker that day; there are one or two details that might stand out, but given the number of people and the magnitude of the event, they are hardly singular. But living them while reading Gill’s narrative, they remind me both how unthinkable that day was, and how unthinking our response now seems.