The Battle for Ground Zero: A Talk on Architecture, Public Space and Democracy

Harvard University’s Elizabeth Greenspan discussed her book , Battle for Ground Zero: Inside the Political Struggle to Rebuild the World Trade Center (Palgrave Macmillian 2013). The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site has been mired in countless controversies, and nearly all of them can be traced back to a central tension: competing senses of public versus private ownership of the land. This talk explored how decision-makers negotiated this tension in the first years at Ground Zero, often through manipulations of architecture and space.Presented by Urban Studies Program and the Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania.