Abstract
Eric Wanner of the Russell Sage Foundation showed extraordinary leadership in bringing together New York's vast network of scholars to “use the tools of social science … to probe the deeper dimensions of what has happened in the wake of September 11” (xi). The Foundation moved quickly to develop its series of volumes on the disaster and as a consequence we have a rich and detailed history of the immediate and early stages of the post–9/11 landscape in New York. In Contentious City: The Politics of Recovery in New York City, John Mollenkopf had the difficult task of editing a volume of essays whose stated purpose is to address the political consequences of the 9/11 attack on New York City and to evaluate both the decision makers and their decisions. Mollenkopf states at the outset of the volume that “September 11 did indeed change the political dynamics of the city and the rest of the world, but in completely different ways than anticipated” (4). It is unfortunate that Mollenkopf chose to make such a sweeping conclusion at the outset of this volume. Cataclysmic events are generally best understood years, if not decades, after they happen, and 9/11 is no exception. As I recall, the news media kept repeating that 9/11 would change everything in New York City and the nation. It is surprising that nowhere in this volume does anyone make any effort to explain exactly what the media were saying and what changes they were anticipating.
The most successful edited volumes are integrated around a theme or an interesting research question. Mollenkopf makes a valiant effort to put a frame around this diverse set of essays, but the real value in this volume as it relates to 9/11 comes in the essays by Lynn Sagalyn, Susan Fainstein, and Mitchell Moss. Did 9/11 significantly change the existing political dynamics in New York City, or is rebuilding the World Trade Center (WTC) just another economic development project in which political faultlines simply follow the usual intense, fractured, and contentious struggles of other large–scale development projects? Sagalyn and Fainstein put the WTC rebuilding process in context. At first glance, this is an epic story of the clash of interests—the power of a big developer; a public still in mourning after the terrorist attack; a government agency whose power was largely invisible to the public and which was unaccountable to the City's elected officials; the destruction of a national icon and a symbol of American capitalism; an act of war with a still–unidentified enemy; and the City's need to rebuild something spectacular and powerful to reclaim what was lost. All three writers in this section of the volume help us understand that the crisis was of biblical proportion, but the recovery was played out within a political and legal framework that has constrained economic development projects in New York City for at least 50 years.
Critical to this whole story are the structural characteristics of New York City politics. Sagalyn, who has written extensively on the politics of redevelopment in New York City, explains the political and economic parameters of the rebuilding. The Port Authority originally built the WTC on a 16–acre “superblock” and had owned the site until six weeks before 9/11 when it signed a 99–year lease with the private developer Larry Silverstein. Fainstein's overview of the Port Authority is invaluable. The Port Authority is a bi–state agency whose members are appointed by the governors of New York and New Jersey. Authorities are created to “evade public review” (90), and the PA had no interest in changing this part of its charter. Add to the mix the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which the Governor created to control the process, but was incapable of asserting legal authority over the Port Authority; a newly elected mayor of New York City who came from the business community; a newly appointed Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding preoccupied with New York City's Olympics bid; and a private developer who controlled the insurance claim money necessary for rebuilding. Political conflicts were inevitable.
Moss also offers an important piece of the political puzzle with his discussion of the Mayor's plan for lower Manhattan. The City viewed rebuilding as part of a larger economic development strategy to make lower Manhattan a 24/7 community by adding more residential buildings, open space, and an improved transit network. Sagalyn again provides important contextual information for understanding the complexity of the rebuilding process what had been lost to the City's economy. She explains that the WTC contained 12.5 percent of lower Manhattan's office inventory. More than 42,000 people worked in it. It had 450,000 square feet of retail space, and was the nation's third largest grossing mall. There was also a vast infrastructure of subway, storage loading, parking, and energy facilities in the “bathtub” foundation.
By the time rebuilding got underway in earnest, the situation had reverted to politics as usual in New York City: “No one could claim legitimate authority to manage the dual objectives of remembrance and rebuilding” (63). All three authors acknowledge that WTC development politics bears a strikingly resemblance to other large–scale redevelopment projects in New York City like the Forty–Second Street Development Project, Battery Park City, and the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. All these highly contentious projects required more than one round of planning, and the needs of business dominated the negotiations.
Chapters by Young and Goldberg offer interesting perspectives on how civic organizations engaged in the rebuilding process and the memorial decision–making. However, these chapters offer evidence that what may have appeared to be significant changes in NYC's development politics in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 ironically proved to be largely irrelevant to the final outcome.
The last two essays by Minnite and Mollenkopf attempt to evaluate what changed in the broader political fabric of New York City as a result of 9/11. In fairness, this is a difficult question to answer without an historical or comparative perspective. Minnite's essay on the immigrant community in New York is interesting, but only partly successful. She begins with a basic description of the increasing diversity in NYC and how immigrants now make up 30 percent of the voting population. However, this does not really have much to do with 9/11. In contrast, the second part of the essay is on point. It describes post–9/11 federal policy, including the September 11 detainee program and the sweeping federal crackdown on New York's Muslim populations. Minnite effectively documents the destructive impact of the federal government's Special Registration Program on these communities. She argues convincingly that “9/11 exposed the weaknesses in the communal institutions of immigrant communities” (186) and relates how new organizations and coalitions emerged to protect immigrants’ rights.
This is very important, but I was surprised that there was no discussion of the response of City government. Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council spoke out against this aggressive federal policy. The mayor issued Executive Order 41 expanding the rights of undocumented immigrants to access services in the City and defending their right to privacy. Distinguishing between how the federal and city governments responded should have been a critical part of this essay.
Mollenkopf's final chapter addresses the political impact of 9/11 from an electoral perspective. He states that 9/11 enhanced Bloomberg's chances of becoming mayor. This is certainly plausible, but the obvious and unanswered question is how would Freddy Ferrer or Mark Green have governed differently? The most evident political impact of 9/11 is the policy agenda of the Bloomberg mayoralty. If that question is too difficult to answer then this volume should have minimally considered the changes in policy the City government implemented as a result of 9/11. For example, the NYC Police Department created its own counter–terrorism unit of 1,000 officers transferred from traditional police activity. In searching for ways to prepare for a possible bio–terrorist attack, NYC's network of public hospitals and clinics became of interest to the federal government. Most importantly, there was a change in the public's view of government—the realization that the heroes of 9/11 were public servants, men and women from the Fire Department, Police Department, and Emergency Services. The irony of 9/11 is that the important role of government once again became clear to a citizenry that had been told by presidents since Ronald Reagan and New York City's own Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who tried to privatize the public hospital system, that only the private sector can effectively solve urban problems. The extraordinary political consequence of 9/11 was the realization that government in New York City worked. While I think this volume is valuable, the most important political impacts of 9/11 remain unexamined.