Planning Histories, Urban Futures, and the World Trade Center Attack

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the place of planning history in the discussion of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and of its aftermath. It is based on an analysis of a range of articles and messages published on this subject, particularly within a month of the attack: newspapers, a planning Web site, a listserv for urban historians, and academic planning journals. After indicating the types of presence that planning and urban histories have had in the post-9/11 discourse, the article outlines some of the debates on urban futures—and assumptions about urban pasts— that have been common in this period, before concluding with observations on the various identities of those involved in these discussions. The article not only seeks to assess the lessons from this retrospective process of looking toward the “ghosts” of wars and reconstructions past but also examines how these—as well as planning history—have been instrumentalized to imagine alternative urban futures.