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There has been no healing, really. Four years have passed since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the road to recovery at ground zero looks bleaker than ever. A rebuilding effort that was originally cast as a symbolic rising from the ashes has long since turned into a hallucinogenic nightmare: a roller coaster ride of grief, naïveté, recriminations, political jockeying and paranoia.

Rendering by Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
The only project at ground zero whose future is not in danger of being dumped is the transportation hub, designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava.
The Freedom Tower, promoted as an image of the city's resurrection, has been transformed into a stern fortress - a symbol of a city still in the grip of fear. The World Trade Center memorial has been enveloped by a clutter of memorabilia.

And the promise that culture would play a life-affirming role has proved false now that Gov. George E. Pataki has warned that freedom of expression at ground zero will be strictly controlled. ("We will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom, or denigrates the sacrifice and courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11," he has said.) The Freedom Center, the Drawing Center, the performing arts center that would house the tiny Signature Theater Company and Joyce Theater - all now risk being dumped, either because they are viewed as lacking in sufficient patriotism or because officials were only toying with them in the first place.

[....]

I suppose that Governor Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation could regain a measure of credibility by starting to scale back plans for development at the site. They could solicit proposals for an interim plan, say, that offers a more realistic time frame for rebuilding - not just in economic terms, but in psychic terms as well. The point would be to allow the site's meaning to evolve over time, from a place for grieving to a place where architecture reasserts the value of life.

But none of this will be possible without shifting the emphasis back to what is most important at ground zero: the cultural and public spaces that could be emotionally transformative. It would require some patience and humility. Until then, aesthetic judgments are all but irrelevant.

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