Elizabeth Greenspan is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her articles and reviews about cities and urban life have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Places Journal, among other outlets. She received a 2024 Silvers Grant for her forthcoming book, a cultural history of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, cities and the 1970s, to be published by WW Norton (US) and Pushkin Press (UK). She is the author of Battle for Ground Zero, about the politics of commerce and commemoration at the World Trade Center site, and she has a PhD in anthropology and urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches urban studies and creative writing.
Selected Writing
Longer
“Star System,” The Believer https://www.thebeliever.net/elizabeth-greenspan-star-system/
“Nicetown,” Places Journal https://placesjournal.org/article/nicetown-inequality-in-philadelphia/
“Daniel Libeskind’s Secret Museum of the Kurds,” Bloomberg Businessweekhttps://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-design/a/daniel-libeskind/
Shorter
“Top-down, Bottom-up Urban Design,” The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/top-down-bottom-up-urban-design
“The New Must-Have for Luxury Buildings: Graffiti,” The New Yorkerhttps://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-new-must-have-for-luxury-buildings-graffiti
“How to Manhattanize a City,” The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-to-manhattanize-a-city
“The Beginning of America’s Most Fought Over Public Space, Salonhttps://www.salon.com/2013/08/18/ground_zero_the_first_few_days/
Reviews
“An Unsolved Problem,” New York Review of Architecture https://nyra.nyc/articles/denise-scott-brown-an-inconvenient-legacy
“A Dream of Homeownership, Undermined,” The New Republichttps://newrepublic.com/article/155622/dream-homeownership-undermined
“The Ambitious but Flawed ‘House Housing’,” Architect https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/the-ambitious-but-flawed-house-housing
“It’s a New Day in the Gayborhood,” New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/new-day-gayborhood
“Bricks and Mortals,” The Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/07/21/book-review-bricks-mortals-ten-great-buildings-and-people-they-made-tom-wilkinson/uDS2me0EWVf0VB5miVbY3O/story.html
Books
Just after 9/11, Americans came together in a way not seen for generations. As people gave blood, enlisted in the army, and stickered their cars with the flag, they looked to Ground Zero as a rallying symbol, confident that its restoration would prove New York City — and the nation – was stronger than ever. But before rescue workers had even finished clearing the rubble, the site was embroiled in controversy that would plague it for the next ten years – and rob the country of the closure it so desperately sought.
Read MoreElizabeth Greenspan has been documenting the events at Ground Zero since the fall of 2001, speaking with scores of neighborhood residents, rescue workers, and victims’ relatives, as well as attending key meetings where the site’s fate was decided. Battle for Ground Zero takes the reader behind the scenes to reveal how grieving families, commercial interests, and politicking bureaucrats have clashed at every turn – from security concerns to the design of the memorial to the role of office space in the rebuilding — confounding progress and infuriating the public. Drawing on unique interviews with key New York players like Governor George Pataki, über-developer Larry Silverstein, Port Authority director Christopher Ward, and master planner Daniel Libeskind, Greenspan provides an unprecedented look at this dysfunctional process, which so often mirrored the complex challenges of the times.
One WTC may again be the tallest building in New York, but Americans will never forget how long it took to get there. In Battle for Ground Zero, Liz Greenspan captures the intervening decade with vital, uncompromising clarity.
“Elizabeth Greenspan, an urban anthropologist, vividly recounts the dysfunctional process and controversies that put her favorite graffiti, “America the Re-build-iful,” to a grueling test that is only now about to be graded by the public… a valuable and highly accessible primer for everyone who wants to better understand how government works and why it does not.”
— The New York Times
“Greenspan pulls out the best of contemporary history … Her urban ethnography methodology does what so often failed to happen in the hands of idealistic and opportunistic politicians, bureaucrats, and commercial interests – give voice to the people.”
— London School of Economics Review of Books
“Absorbing and illuminating about the tortuous process of deciding what should rise from the ashes of the 16-acre Ground Zero site…Elizabeth Greenspan, an urban anthropologist at Harvard, is not a New Yorker…which helps her remain scrupulously fair-minded…the level of detail is impressive but never overwhelming”
— Sunday Times (London)
“A must-read study of the power of democracy and shared memory to shape our public spaces.”
— Kirkus (Starred Review)
Media
TV, Radio, & Press
Listen to Liz discuss the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum on PRI’s ‘The World.
Listen to Liz talk about Battle for Ground Zero on NPR’s ‘Here and Now.’
Watch Liz discuss Battle for Ground Zero with Ken Feinberg on CSPAN’s ‘BookTV.’
WNYC’s ‘The Leonard Lopate Show.’
Liveblog about Battle for Ground Zero on Firedoglake.
Sixteen Acre Battlefield,” Harvard Magazine.
Q&A with the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network
Q&A with the New York Times’ Michael Paulson.
Contact
Contact
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