Twenty-five Years after 9-11, What Do Great Cities Owe Their People?

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, we continue to mourn the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives that day. But another tragedy was unfolding in the weeks, months, and years that followed – one whose consequences continue today.

When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, they released an enormous cloud of pulverized concrete, glass, asbestos, metals, chemicals, and other hazardous materials across Lower Manhattan. Fires at Ground Zero continued to burn for months. Yet within days, public officials were reassuring New Yorkers that the air was safe. The Financial District reopened, residents returned to their homes, students returned to nearby schools, and thousands of workers returned to their jobs.

On September 18, 2001, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman publicly reassured New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe. Mayor Rudy Giuliani similarly sought to assure the public that Lower Manhattan was safe.

One journalist began asking questions.

Juan González, then a columnist for the New York Daily News and co-host of Democracy Now!, began investigating what was actually in the dust and air surrounding Ground Zero. His columns raised questions about asbestos, dioxins, PCBs, heavy metals and other contaminants and about the respiratory illnesses already appearing among firefighters, cleanup workers, residents and others who had been exposed.

Within months, González gathered and expanded that reporting in Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. His argument was disturbing: government officials could not possibly know that the environment surrounding Ground Zero was safe because a disaster of this magnitude had never occurred before. Rather than communicate that uncertainty and take precautionary measures, officials offered assurances that encouraged people to return.

González also asked why.

New York and the nation were determined to demonstrate that the attacks would not stop the city. Reopening Wall Street became a powerful symbol of resilience. But the desire to return to “business as usual” collided with another fundamental governmental responsibility: protecting public health.

The questions González raised were not welcomed. According to accounts resurfacing this week, the Giuliani administration contacted the Daily News and sought to have him fired.

Twenty-five years later, the questions he raised have acquired renewed urgency.

This week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the release of approximately 170,000 pages of previously unavailable city records concerning air quality, health risks, and the government’s response following 9/11. The documents include records that had remained in 68 boxes that city officials say were not located until 2025. González was among those invited to City Hall for the announcement.

The consequences of those early decisions can no longer be considered hypothetical. Tens of thousands of responders, workers, residents and others exposed to the World Trade Center disaster have subsequently developed cancers, respiratory diseases and other illnesses associated with their exposure. The federal World Trade Center Health Program exists precisely because the health consequences of 9/11 did not end when the fires at Ground Zero stopped burning.

There is an important lesson here about environmental health. But there is an equally important lesson about democracy.

Democracy depends upon the ability of people to obtain information about conditions that affect their lives. It depends upon journalists willing to challenge official narratives, scientists willing to acknowledge uncertainty, residents and workers willing to raise questions, and public institutions willing to place human well-being above political convenience.

And it requires something else: government willing to tell people what it knows – and what it does not know.

This matters far beyond the history of September 11. Cities increasingly confront environmental disasters, extreme heat, wildfire smoke, industrial contamination, climate-related emergencies and other hazards whose consequences may not immediately be understood. In those moments, government officials will often face pressures to restore normalcy, protect economic activity and reassure the public.

But reassurance is not the same thing as protection.

For us at the Great Cities Institute, this history has particular resonance. Juan González is now a Senior Fellow at GCI, bringing to the Institute a long record of journalism and scholarship examining cities, inequality, political power, and the consequences of public decisions. His reporting in the aftermath of September 11 is an important reminder of the role that independent inquiry can play in democratic life: following the evidence, questioning authoritative claims when the evidence demands it, and ensuring that the experiences of residents and workers are not lost within official accounts.

Twenty-five years later, the reporting of Juan González reminds us why independent journalism and public access to information are indispensable to democratic life. The release of these records also reminds us that transparency delayed can carry enormous human consequences.

Perhaps that is one measure of a great city: not simply how quickly it recovers from catastrophe, but whether its institutions have the courage to protect its people, acknowledge uncertainty, make information public, and remain accountable for the decisions made in their name.