TROPOLISM

Just when you thought the WTC site could not get less interesting, more bloated by rhetoric, more misguided by people enthralled by arcane sentimentality and not memoriality (is that a word?), this happens:

Ms. Burlingame, who attended yesterday's board meeting, said both the Freedom Center and Drawing Center should be removed from the memorial area, though she endorsed the Snohetta building if it can be "redesigned to be filled with the story of 9/11."

"The magnitude of that story would fill several Snohetta buildings," she added

Tropolism cannot see how this means anything except a full Imax experience. Is this really the kind of memorial she's suggesting?

During the development of the master plan for this site, the relatives of victims of that day played an important political role: they were people who had lost people, and they were struggling against turning WTC into a huge office park, by claiming space for a memorial. Yet suddenly it's easy to feel as if they have become holy-people, and their ideas, which threaten to turn the entire WTC site into a staid memorial (the least urban of all public spaces), complete with controlled programming, are unopposable. As a New Yorker, I can safely say this, because it's the right time: give me a break, lady. You're not the only person who lost something that day. I lost a piece of my city. Stay away from free speech in the public realm.