Greed is Good

Rudolph Giuliani has declared that anything other than a big memorial on the WTC site would tell future generations that all that matters is "greed."

"A couple of decades from now, when people go there, if what they see are large buildings and a little memorial, they are going to have a very poor impression of our generation," Giuliani told reporters.

So continuing to operate the WTC after the 1993 bomb which killed six was just a little greedy, then? Is the standard that if enough innocents are murdered, the murderers get to forever dictate the use of the crime scene -- a solemn tomb -- to society?

Sorry, Rudy. The best tribute to the fallen would showcase another bustling center of human activity -- working, eating, buying, selling, yelling, crying, striving. Living.

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

Brad S.,

If land stolen from the Indians is currently vacant, I think they have first claim on it. I think a case that happened in living memory, to people many of whom are still living, is a little different. Or is the fact that Indians were robbed going to be used to trump any argument against future robbery? Besides, my main point was to object to the smarmy appeals to the "values represented by the WTC," and to point out the real values involved in its construction.

joe,

I don't object to private funds being collected. But I'm pretty skeptical about monuments in general. That piece of crap in Okie City with the 150-odd chairs is a case in point. No to mention that god-awful WWII monument that's going to ruin the Mall. (I know the Mall's a "public monument," but it's a layout we've had generations to get used to; and when we're lucky enough to have a monument that looks halfway tolerable, it's doubly horrendous to ruin it with something like that WWII memorial).

Anyway, joe, I was objecting more to the idea of building some kind of horrible new Stalinist building on the site, not to a (tasteful) memorial.

[Anonymous]

The grief culture gets so baffling at times. What if a lunatic at a Starbucks kills one innocent person? Should we close it down and erect a permanent memorial? Of course not. What if two people get murdered? Nope. How many people have to die, then, before the Starbucks becomes sacred ground, and should be seized for public use?

There?s no doubt at all that the victims of 9/11 have and are experiencing unimaginable pain. But what makes 9/11 different from the countless other actions of political violence? Why are the 9/11 victims entitled to a special fund, and are suing the airlines? I don't recall a special fund for Oklahoma City, and I don't remember the victims suing U-haul.

[PETA member]

We need to also remember the birds, insects, and amoeba murdered at the WTC site on 9/11. Other animals are just as important as human.

[Anonymous]

At least the people in Pompeii had the sense to become their own memorial.

[R.C. Dean]

First, the site is no longer a grave - all the fill that might contain remains has been removed, I believe. If you are looking for sacred ground, you had better head off to the Fresh Kills landfill (and if that isn't a horrible name for the landfill that contains the two towers, I don't know what is.)

Would NY be better off with a park down there? Certainly not economically. A park will not employ anyone to speak of or generate any wealth.

The vast majority of the site should be rebuilt to the maximize density that good old economics dictate. There should be a relatively small memorial. How hard is that?

[cdunlea]

I think they should reconstruct the Trade Towers bigger and better, with a memorial to the fallen. That, to me, would send the real message to the terrorists--we're America, you can kick us but we'll still get up and come back stronger. We're not going to curl up and die of grief. F*ck you, Osama.

[Native NYer]

I think the best memorial to the victims two years ago would be about 3,000,000 square miles of crazed green glass covering the middle east.

[joe]

"Would NY be better off with a park down there? Certainly not economically. A park will not employ anyone to speak of or generate any wealth."

Improving the quality of the district would increase the desirability of the space around it for residential and commercial uses, and enhance its economic potential. Looking at the site by itself, without the context of the rest of the area, would be a disaster - whether we're talking about a memorial park, or a building design.

[Rebel Holler Pres]

At ground zero, build five buildings, facing Saudi Arabia. From left to right, build four towers, 12, 18, 60, and 20 stories high. In front of the four towers, build a long, 6 story building.

On the skyline of NTC, it would resemble the city shooting a big fat bird at our enemies.

[JDM]

"The grief culture gets so baffling at times."

No no no. We're not supposed to feel grief. Just guilt. Your penance must be public, and it must include handing some of your money over to the appropriate authorities. You just aren't civic minded enough. You need to go back to public school to increase your "self esteem," and diminish your sense of self worth.

Also, a nice park will give the city planners a chance to really show their stuff.

[Mo]

I don't know how you give the finger Rebel, but the way you described it, it sounds like the finger is pointed to the rest of the US from the direction of Saudi Arabia. Most people I know have the thumb in the back when they give the finger.

[joe]

City planners don't design parks. But don't worry, JDM; even people who aren't bitter lunatics don't understand what we do.

[JDM]

Well this bitter lunatic certainly understands that. Though if city planners don't adjudicate land use, and if a nice park wouldn't give them a chance to bask in the appreciation of the public for pleasant civic minded zoning, and if there would be no quotes in the paper by the city crowing about its wonderful planning afterwards, then you'd have a point to make.

[joe]

Parks aren't created by zoning. Done yet?

[EgoLadenDilettanteGuy]

I'm just waiting for one of you guys to suggest paving over Auschwitz:

"Hey, put up a parking lot to show the world that Jews still wanna make money after all they've been through. Oh yeah, and a little commemorative plaque in the corner--but you can take that down when everyone forgets what it's for"

[Brad S]

Along the lines of EgoLadenDilettanteGuy's suggestion, I'm surprised someone hasn't argued that cemetaries are wasted space, since no one is able to develop this land and profit from it (except for possibly the mortician and the funeral home). Come to think of it, I'm also surprised someone hasn't argued that we should just quit the practice of having funerals and honoring the dead altogether. After all, the dead don't promote free trade and the dead can't help us legalize marijuana...

[JDM]

No.

Your point seems to be that as a layman I've misused the term "zoning." Good for you. If you read my comments that way, I'm also misusing the term "city planner" as well, since I'm not using it as the technical job description would. I'd include all of the bureaucrats, earnest though they may be, who perform city planning duties, whether they are technically city planners, members of the monorail comission, or whatever board is steering the fate of the WTC site. If you can tell me that these people have no say in where the parks go, well, I'd be stumped, because not all parks are on private land, and they aren't all put to a vote. And if you can tell me that they aren't motivated in large part by an odious white guilt liberal "civicness," I'd also be stumped because, well, look at you.

I don't have a problem with the Kumbaya crowd when they aren't using any of my money, or of anyone who hasn't asked to spend it. And I don't have a fundamental problem with city planners (as I define the term) as long as they aren't in Kumbaya mode, as demonstrated by results, while they are planning.

[Hovig John Heghinian]

I find the comparison to Auschwitz inapt. I might argue Auschwitz's remaining standing has not really reduced anti-Semitism or genocide, nor has the Holocaust hindered the world or the Jewish people from progressing with success.

As an Armenian, I might ask, where is the monument to my 1.5 million slaughtered ancestors? And does anyone care? Life sucks. What can I say.

Not only wasted space, cemetaries strike me as health hazards. Every tornado seems to hit a mobile trailer park, and every flood seems to hit a cemetary. I find it a bit revulsive, frankly. There's a stretch of the Garden State Parkway that passes right through a cemetary. Yuck.

[Phil]

I'm surprised someone hasn't argued that cemetaries are wasted space, since no one is able to develop this land and profit from it . . .

I'm willing to make this argument if you want me to. Get cremated. Once you're dead, you don't need to be taking up space that can be put to otherwise useful purposes. If nothing else, people could make homes on it.

[Citizen]

Actually I do think that cemetaries are pretty lame. You wanna honor somebody? Go plant a tree. It's alive, it's cheaper, it's prettier, it's contributing to the earth. On the other hand, without cemetaries, we wouldn't have this: http://www.jonathan-clark.com/afterlife/cemetery.htm

And Auschwitz wasn't in the middle of downtown Warsaw. The people that go to Auschwitz "on vacation" (however sick that may be) go there for the camp itself.

[dhex]

there's an armenian church in northern new jersey (i'd swear it's near teaneck but i can't remember) with a large stone monument out in front of it. however, that's the only one i've ever seen.

the idea of mass murder has more or less been replaced with one solitary mass murder against one group of people, which has a lot more pitfalls than merely being historically dishonest.

[Anonymous]

Isn't the point of cemeteries to have a special place to memorialize people, rather than block off the place where they happen to die? Let's have a memorial at the nearest cemetery to the WTC, unless the families want otherwise.

Something tells me we don't need a "memorial", since people aren't likely to forget the incident.

[Ron Hardin]

Cemetaries are nice. The headstones are a sign of life elsewhere, like all writing, or in fact like writing in general. It's sort of pointless in a city, where it lacks the rural suggestion that there isn't life around.

What was the movie, ``We have to figure out a way to get these stiffs off our land''?

[dhex]

oh, and i forgot: fuck guiliani. just on general principles.

[Madog]

Funny that people should make a big deal about it being a "graveyard". I live in a neighborhood in England that was built on top of an orchard where the soldiers of King Henry VIII dumped a bunch of murdered catholic monks. We were always finding human remains, teeth, fingers, etc.

[Hovig John Heghinian]

dhex - In that case, the NYT today reports ceremonies were held in Essex County NJ at an WTC 9/11 memorial engraved with the names of the perished.

(P.S. Yes, the church is in Teaneck, I know of it. But I don't need to. They and every other blessed Armenian Church on the planet has a genocide memorial. Every Armenian practically carries a cross on their shoulders every day of their life. Fat lot of good it does, except break peoples' backs.)

[EgoLadenDilettanteGuy]

Hovig John Heghinian
Auschwitz remaining standing has TOO reduced anti-Semitism in the west.

Getting a little cynical for a bit, a large part of the reason I can say what ever the hell I want about Armenians without geting in trouble is that THEY weren't savvy enough to save their genocide sites.

Getting a lot more cynical for a bit, by keeping Auschwitz alive, Jews have parlayed the Holocaust (I prefer Shoah, since some Jews survived it) memory into that successful progress you mention.

I agree with you that life sucks, though.

Citizen ("Auschwitz wasn't in the middle of downtown Warsaw"): That's just a quibble.

[Jack]

Brad S,

Your analogy with cemetaries is inapt. Cemetaries are typically privately owned (whether by mortuaries, churches, etc.) and the owners have decided that they wish to devote the land to the purpose of housing remains/memorials. Here, the owner of the land (the Port Authority) wants to develop most of the property commercially. Indeed, the major reason the PA built the WTC in the first place was for revenue-generating purposes.

[joe]

Well, if you're done with the cheap shots, that's something, at least. Though if you can't imagine why anyone would give a shit about their community or the people around them, except guilt, then you need a heart, tin man.

"And I don't have a fundamental problem with city planners (as I define the term) as long as they aren't in Kumbaya mode, as demonstrated by results, while they are planning." Back to my point, you don't think cities and districts therein demonstrate better results by having well planned, well designed, character-defining parks and public spaces? Property values rise, vacancies decrease, people meet their neighbors, kids (especially in cities) have a place to play, office workers have a place to eat lunch, and people in the concrete jungle are able to satisfy the primal human need to see green. Has it occured to you that there's a reason why Park Avenue is such a desirable address?

Look beyond the site level.

I couldn't agree more about Kumbaya, though.

[joe]

"Cemetaries are nice. The headstones are a sign of life elsewhere, like all writing, or in fact like writing in general. It's sort of pointless in a city, where it lacks the rural suggestion that there isn't life around."

Cemeteries bring a whole other set of benefits to cities. There's the green space to look at, walk through, etc. There's also the reminder that there were people here before you, and your time will come to an end, which provides an appropriate sense of humility and proportion for people caught up in their daily rat race.

Also, most cemeteries are publically owned, at least in Masschusetts, and have been since the Puritans. I don't know if this is the case elsewhere.

[JDM]

"Though if you can't imagine why anyone would give a shit about their community or the people around them, except guilt, then you need a heart, tin man."

I can imagine it, scarecrow, I just can't see it.

In the city of Seattle, we are currently undergoing a multi-billion dollar boondoggle known as light rail, and a half billion dollar boondoggle known as the monorail, only a few years after undergoing a billion dollar boondoggle known as 2-stadiums-built-across-the-road-from-each-other. One was handed over to billionaire Paul Allen after public funds paid for half of it. The other was built after the voters rejected it in a referendum. Both of them in a city of 500,000 that already included 70,000 seat stadium for the UW Huskies.

None of them were built (or are being built) primarily to serve the individuals of Seattle to the best of the planners' ability. The monorail and light-rail people admit freely that neither will do anything to ease congestion(the Seattle papers are all online if you care to look,) though the voters don't seem to be listening. The planners just want Seattle to be a "world class city" with commuter options, you know, like San Fransisco. That this feel-good stupidity gets rather tiresome.

My point? These people rarely have the best interests of the individuals who live in Seattle at heart, and rather are working from some sort of subjective internal motivation - as we all are - but they are spending very large amounts of other people money for no tangible result. Not to be unfair some of them are working for kick-backs, of course.

[joe]

Wow, I left myself wide open for the scarecrow gag, huh? Anyway, contemporary planners (real planners, not your definition) have imbibed enough Jane Jacobs to roll their eyes at the whole "world class city" bullshit. What you're describing is called an Edifice Complex, and is the provenance of elected officials and the businessmen who own them.

Give more decision making ability to planners, and you will get more involvement in decision making by neighborhood groups and ordinary people; projects that meet actual, demonstrable needs; and more hard-headed cost/benefit analysis of proposed projects.

I don't think I've ever met a real planner who thinks nine figure outlays for stadiums is a good idea.

[JDM]

Give more decision making power to planners, and you will get more decisions that reflect the desires of the planners, whether they are what you call planners or what I call planners. (Which is not actually "planners" by the way.)

[Russ D]

joe, how do you "Give more" decision making to the planners? And at the same time have more involvement? Do these neighborhood groups get decision making power? Or do they have to accept whatever the planners decide? At some point, they have to spend money they don't have, or they have to force everyone to pony up even if some people disagree with the plans.

All you're asking for is more of the same. If you admit it's not working, why would more of the same work? You and I pretty much agree as far as our taste in city aesthetics is concerned, but we have choices so we choose them. I don't like driving, so I don't live in the suburbs. But some people like the suburbs, and take the driving as a consequence. That's their choice. I don't see why this stuff has to be left to city planners.

If the WTC property is city-owned property, then whatever planners are in power now will get to make the decisions. But if the whole point of building the towers in the first place was to generate revenue for social services, where is the replacement revenue going to come from if this site can never generate revenue again?

I've been tangentially involved with Fenway Park. There are several neighborhood groups involved, each one wants something different. Some want more parking, some want less parking, some want no change whatsoever. So will let them do anything but only if a public school gets built in the neighborhood.

What you wind up with is groups diametrically opposed who won't negotiate at all. And when they do negotiate, you get something designed by committee, usually pleasing nobody. More planners may be a good idea, but I think we've already got that one solved. Let everyone do whatever they want with their own property. Or is it that you really want to dictate what other people can and can't do with their own property?

[Forbes Tuttle]

Some intereting comments, some way off target, but that's the charm of such comments. City Journal, from the Manhattan Institute used their entire Autumn issue 2001, to present a template for rebuilding the WTC site, from memorials, to returning the site back into a neighborhood attached to its surroundings. It doesn't seem that anything close to this proposal will result, but any of you kvetching about what should be done with the site, it's worth a look. I think it's far and away better than anything proposed or planned to date--it's that good. See it here:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/issue_11_4.html

[JAT]

Thanks for all the thoughtful posts.

Couple reax: the wonder of the WTC was not its basic geometry, but the insane scale that gave thousands a place to make a living. Yes, public authorities are evil, waay back when (92? 93?) in an un-Webbed review of The Shadow Government for Reason I made this clear. It is not the same thing to preserve the awful reality of a killing machine -- a concentration camp -- for future generations as it is to decide to take a site normally and reasonably used for human interaction and decide to make it a shrine. (A graveyard is even less related -- it is ALWAYS a shrine.)

Be well.

[Ray]

It is extremely rare that one hears of NYC as an ideal model for city planning.

Kind of like holding up the USSR as an example of industrial efficiency.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Why don't we all just agree to flip a coin on it and end it there. We have 300 million Americans and it looks like there isn't one King Solomon in the bunch when it comes to this.

[joe]

Rudy goes too far, but so do you Jeff. The site shouldn't be a monument to terrorism, but it shouldn't appear that nothing ever happened either.

Appropriate sentiments on both sides, but both need to be taken into account for the design.

[Kevin Carson]

Jeff,

The WTC was originally put up with the use of eminent domain, and through the collusion of David Rockefeller and the Port Authority, among others. When those three things come together, it's a pretty good guess the outcome will have little to do with either free markets or free trade, or libertarian values of any sort.

The World Trade Center reflected libertarian values to the same extent as the northeast power grids.

Gigantic, monumental buildings (think Stalinist architecture) and centralized infrastructure generally symbolize something imposed from the top down by the State, not something built from the bottom up by free people cooperating voluntarily.

[Ron Hardin]

A temporary memorial would be nice, to be removed when there's no longer much audience for it.

[Brad S]

There is a such thing as the sanctimony of human life. For all his faults, Rudy at least has respect for that, unlike many people out there. That site is a graveyard for thousands of people. The rest of us should respect it as such.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, the NYPD under Giuliani really had that sanctimony for human life thing down pretty good.

Let the free market decide what to do with the commercially-zoned property.

[Anonymous]

I'm all for sanctimony as long as my taxes don't go up.

[objective dissent]

Jeff,

Amen.

The rest of you; memorials in the sense that Rudy intends are gaudy, melodramatic and emotionaly over reactive. Such displays eventually downgrade the value of what is supposed to be commemorated.

So do we commemorate the 3000 lives with more life or do we commemorate their deaths with some ostentatious memorial so the emotional reactionaries can feel better about it for a year or so.

[Chuck]

Hey Brad, I think that you made a classic Freudian error.

The phrase that you were going for was "the sanctity of human life."

"Sanctimony" = moralistic pomposity

[pedant]

^^^^speaking of malaprops, that's a "Freudian Slip" to you, bub.

[nm156]

Can't you have both the economic edifice AND the memorial to those who perished? Build the biggest, baddest monument to capitalism you can, as a means of showing the scumbags that you aren't going to back down, but include a significant reminder of what was lost. My understanding is that the WTC footprint was huge, so what is the problem?

[Brad S]

Sanctity is what should be preserved with the memorial. I suppose one could argue that Rudy is mostly concerned with being sanctimonious. At any rate, thanks for pointing out my Freudian mistake. 😉

[thoreau]

Joe-

You argue for balance. We can't have that! Either you absolutely favor one thing, or you absolutely favor its opposite. As John Ashcroft said, (paraphrase) the only things in the middle of the road are moderates and dead skunks.

(The above was sarcasam. I actually agree with Joe's common sense statement.)

[Kevin Carson]

objective dissent,

How about celebrating the values of liberty, family, neighborhood, etc., that we share by giving the area back to the people who lived there before David Rockefeller et al. stole it?

[Brad S]

Kevin,

Better yet - how about we all go back to whatever nation in Europe (or Africa or Asia or Lation America etc) that we came from and give the land back to the native people?

[joe]

Kevin,

Don't you think the devastating historical event, and the heroism and sacrifice of the FDNY, NYPD, and Port Authority deserve to be commemorated at all? I know you have an emotional aversion to public servants, but come on!

And don't you think a memorial park would be a beneficial addition to Lower Manhattan?

[Zathras]

I've never been comfortable with memorials to events that happened in the very recent past. I don't say they are a bad idea, I just don't have a lot to say about them.

Practically, though, New York needs to acknowledge the potential conflicts involved with reconstruction, not just between advocates of a memorial and those of commercial development, but between advocates of the kind of commercial development that restores as much of the pre-9/11 environment as possible and the reality that market forces will work against this.

I mean that New York does not appear to need all the office space that reconstruction designs call for (what it does need more of -- residential development -- is not something anyone seems to be calling for right now). Remember that the original WTC suffered from chronically low occupancy in the years after it was first built. There was a recession on then, and the equivalent of a recession on now. I don't disagree with Nick Gillespie's abstract idea for a "forward-looking complex" on the WTC site, but a bigger complex (bigger in the sense of having more commercially leasable space) will suffer from the same problems as the original WTC did back in the 1970s.

So on practical grounds, and notwithstanding the powerful forces pushing for the construction of as much commercial development as will fit into the site, it should be possible to find space for an appropriate memorial for those people murdered two years ago. I do agree that making the whole site a memorial is a decision the city would come to regret in later years.

[Anonymous]

Joe,

To answer your questions:

No and No.

[joe]

Anyone see the redesign proposal on TCS? It's a neo-con's dream. An EVEN BIGGER set of twin towers, with huge public financing, with ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILE BATTERIES on top.

Yee-haw!

[Phil]

That site is a graveyard for thousands of people.

So is the property under your house. So is everyplace. People don't conveniently walk into boneyards and fall into open graves to die, you know.

[Brad S]

Phil - no, but in most cases, in civilized societies, people are given proper respects and proper burial, and they have their grave site as a memorial. The WTC victims do not have any of these things. I don't think a reasonable memorial site is too much to ask.

[Hovig John Heghinian]

I think the best memorial for 9/11 would be for every American to be issued a government-spec flagellation device, and beat ourselves about the head and neck 2,902 times a day, and beat everyone else we see on the street as well, constantly, all the time.

Or we can put up a big permanent monument and hope someone in the future actually cares. I don't think everyone who ever visits lower Manhattan from now until the end of time needs to be confronted with a monument.

Maybe we should build a monument that will self-disintegrate after 50 or 100 years. Who today remembers the Oklahoma City National Memorial? And forgive me for asking, but despite the fact that "National Park Service Rangers are on the site daily, except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year?s Day, to answer questions," who among us attending this blog today actually cares?

Grief to me is a private emotion. I think a monument is a permanent conceit for the sake of the temporary living. In this case, it uses human death as a political or ideological symbol, an act with which I do not sympathize. I wonder how many of those calling for a memorial actually knew any of the dead. I'd guess the number approaches zero. This makes the memorial an overtly political act.

In fact, I think it would be better if we did not build a memorial. It would keep our wound open. It would keep us angry. It would make sure we always fight for the sake of the memory of those whom the Islamofascists murdered. Once we build a memorial, I wonder whether we'll think the job is done, and we'll become complacent again.

[joe]

I find some people's (as in, virtually all of Big Media's, and lots of normal people) obesession with the skyline inappropriate. What really matters is the experience of the guy walking down the street past the site, or living a few blocks away, or working across the street, or looking for a job in Manhattan, or visiting New York on vacation.

The idea of leaving it empty is similarly misguided. This neighborhood/borough/city has grown up around this site and assimilated it into its form and function. What happened two years ago was comparable to removing a 2" by 3" by 2" block of flesh from a person's torso - skin, bone, muscle, and all. It isn't just a space, it's a void - meaning, there's supposed to be something there, something connected to the rest of the system, and having that missing is harmful.