I don't think a poll on the honesty of the rebuilding process has ever been done before, and I'm wondering what people's opinions are.

Regardless of what you want built at Ground Zero, how fair do you think the WTC rebuilding process was?

Somewhere between option#4 and #5.

Basically, the powers-at-be decided what they wanted, wrapped it in democracy, and changed what the public wouldn't let them get away with. Not ethical, but not a scandal either.

Foster's towers would have easilly won had it not been for Pataki and Silverstein twistin the whole shit up.

I mean, you can't fuck with this:

http://www.september11news.com/WTC1202DesignFosterPartnersDay.jpg

Option 4. It wasn't as public as it could have been, but you know, the WTC site doesn't exactly belong to the public. You can't have Silverstein lose everything he's worked for his whole life because the public wants a particular brand of skyline scenery (although the surveys done were never enough to give us a sufficient idea of exactly what the general public wanted on the site).

ugh.. politicians..

Option 4. It wasn't as public as it could have been, but you know, the WTC site doesn't exactly belong to the public. You can't have Silverstein lose everything he's worked for his whole life because the public wants a particular brand of skyline scenery (although the surveys done were never enough to give us a sufficient idea of exactly what the general public wanted on the site).

The Liberty Bonds that Silverstein is requesting are public money.

Option 4. It wasn't as public as it could have been, but you know, the WTC site doesn't exactly belong to the public. You can't have Silverstein lose everything he's worked for his whole life because the public wants a particular brand of skyline scenery (although the surveys done were never enough to give us a sufficient idea of exactly what the general public wanted on the site).

1 Yes the WTC does belong to the Public. The WTC site is public land, managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a public semi-governmental organization.

2 Silverstein could have cashed out three years ago. He obligation, as per the leasing agrrement, is to restore whatever is lost. This should mean more than just the numer of square feet. Just because he is greedy does not mean his scared, skinflint attitude should be the driving factor in what New York will have to look at in perpetuity.

3 There may not have been a comprehensive study of what the public wanted, but it's pretty obvious want te public doesn't want, and that is what they're going ahead with. The FT and its complex never was popular, it wasn't even the closest to being popular. It came in 3rd out of the nine final proposals, with 11% supporting.

I dont like to be too radical but i have to go with number 5. Why the hell else did they say that people actually liked the THINK design?!

I dont like to be too radical but i have to go with number 5. Why the hell else did they say that people actually liked the THINK design?!

Do you mean the Libeskind design? Either way, they both suck. :cheers:

5, but they did make a small minority of the public partially happy.

The rebuilding process was as honest as Bonds saying he didn't do steroids. It's as honest as OJ's innocence. It's as honest as Bill Clinton was. That ain't saying much.

The FT and its complex never was popular, it wasn't even the closest to being popular. It came in 3rd out of the nine final proposals, with 11% supporting.
Libeskind's old "glass shard" freedom tower (with 3 stumpier secondary towers) was the one in that competition. Unfortunately, we have no way of getting a decent idea of what the general public thinks about the current design at this point.

I'm going with 4. At first there was open and honest debate about what to do next, but then George Pataki and his LMDC lackeys opened their big mouths and gave strict marching orders- you know what happened from there. I can't call it a second Watergate scandal, but it's a clear sign of arrogance of power that diluted the rebuilding process.

NYC is plagued by politicians like Pataki who openly disragard the public the same way Robert Moses did when he nearly wrecked the South Bronx with the Cross Bronx. The state government in Albany obviously doesn't care for s*** about the opinions of the people south of it.

i vote option 5.

pataki totally trashed the opinions of the public, which overwhelmingly called for the rebuilding of the twins, and instead listened to his utopian friends, who were hell-bent on transforming the once-dynamic site into an architectually ho-hum commune. he did that just because the public opinion can be trashed the most easily and he think that the wtc site's no different from any other piece of real estate, so messing with it won't make a difference.

by the time the beyer blinder belle plans came in, i believe pataki already got his eyes on what he want for the wtc site: the albany skyline reproduced. so after those 6 plans were spat upon by the public, he secretly preserved them in the libeskind plan and therefore made libeskind the winner in a decision where only the votes of he and his cronies count. the he proceeded to even futher alban-ize the plan by throwing out all the more interesting part of the libeskind plan until it was no different from the beyer blinder belle plans.

and now, pataki had performed the biddings of those lunatics from al qaida by imposing the death sentence on the twin towers. he's no better than those madmen for sure, for messing around with the democratic principles of america and use the death of the twins for his own profit (same goes for silverstein, libeskind, and childs). imo, he's just as a big of a liar as bush.

in fact, the only honest part of this rebuilding process is the reconstruction of 7 wtc. everything else is a lie and fraud.