Ground Zero

I teach quite a bit at 140 West Street in downtown Manhattan, and I generally stay at the Embassy a block away.  I often have a view of the big hole where WTC 1 and 2 used to be...

View of the site from my classroom in May.

A view of the "temporary" footbridge that goes by the hole, from my hotel room at sunset.

Vega over Ground Zero.  140 West St is on the left (also in the pic above).

ntodd

[Update: Billmon can be pretty naive sometimes:

If you had told me, five years ago, that on the fifth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in history Ground Zero would still be nothing but an enormous hole in the ground, I wouldn't have believed you -- just as I wouldn't have believed that a major American city could be thoroughly trashed by a Category 4 hurricane and then left to moulder in the mud for a year while various federal, state and local bureaucrats and hack politicians tried to make up their minds what to do.

I would have said that while those kind of things can and do happen in Third World kleptocracies or decaying Stalinist police states, they're simply not possible in the richest and most powerful nation in history.

I did expect the hole to be a hole for several years.  I was actually amazed that the remains of WTC were removed within 6 months. 

But there was clearly no way competing interests after the attacks would allow us to easily figure out what to put there: new skyscrapers in defiance of our enemies; a touching memorial; a park; too many possibilities in an America which pretended to be united but was really divided from the outset by a cynical administration with a singular focus on political advantage.

Quite frankly, does it matter?  There really is no need to rush, in contrast to getting utilities working in NOLA after Katrina...]