Those who gave their lives seeking to save others, and those many who in various ways expressed their solidarity with the victims and the rescue workers all honoured themselves and the city.’ Davis wants none of this. The Unfinished City is prefaced by a note about the disaster that nicely captures Bender’s civic humanism: ‘However tragic, the event had its inspiriting moments. He has been living and studying in New York for nearly three decades, and was at home writing on 11 September. Bender is a cultural historian known for his accounts of the intellectual and aesthetic life of US cities, and for tracing the distinctively metropolitan influences on American arts, letters and politics. Thomas Bender and Mike Davis are two of America’s leading urban scholars. Is New York in denial or is it simply entering another stage of what the historian Max Page sees as a continuous process of creative destruction, refusing to let any obstacle block its path? City Hall has slashed social assistance programmes, closed fire stations, raised train and bus fares and introduced hefty property and income tax increases to eliminate a projected $5 or $6 billion budget deficit, but local leaders are still proposing to use public money to build new athletic stadiums as part of a bid for the 2012 Olympics. After 11 September, architecture critics warned that the age of the skyscraper had ended, yet dozens of new highrises are under construction and whichever design is ultimately chosen for the new Trade Center complex, it will surely feature one of the world’s tallest buildings. Although disaster experts warn that a dirty bomb could result in the evacuation of millions of panicked residents and require the demolition of contaminated buildings and streets, the demand for real estate continues to escalate and housing prices are higher than they were in 2001. The city is familiar with crisis, however, and no one could say it had surrendered to the new and old dangers it faces. In the 1990s New York was the capital city of America’s economic boom: now it is the epicentre of urban insecurity.
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