As we approach the seventh anniversary of 9/11, it is clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero has failed. A recent editorial column in this newspaper by Daniel Henninger made the sad and insightful observation that even the coming together inspired by that awful event came apart as the process itself unraveled. He called the rebuilding arguably the greatest political and bureaucratic fiasco in the history of the world.

I would carry that indictment further. I would say that this has probably been the greatest planning fiasco in the history of the world. Daniel Libeskind's prize-winning design, a flexible, schematic concept that established a framework of achievable, creative possibilities, has been progressively purged by political pandering and economic pragmatism. The Port Authority's own brutally detailed report earlier this year gave some cogent reasons why a strong, unified vision of civic and urban renewal on a plane worthy of a great city could not survive. These ranged from jurisdictional conflicts of the multiple agencies involved to the project's sheer logistical complexity.

Sustaining a vision while dealing with practical problems and realities requires an experienced professional to keep things on course. It takes someone with planning smarts, political savvy, and extraordinary negotiating skills, fueled by a dedicated belief in a clear objective. This kind of leadership was always the critical missing factor at Ground Zero. The businessmen and politicians appointed to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to guide the process lacked that expertise or resolve; they were unable or unwilling to differentiate between economically motivated development and long-term urban goals. They either undervalued the importance of those goals or were unable to hold them under pressure. Nor was there any way they could control the 19 different government entities that the Port Authority report identified as independent agencies taking uncoordinated, counterproductive actions. Both vision and plan were sabotaged by the LMDC's politically correct decisions and convenient compromises.

The conflicting constituencies of state and city governments and the independent Port Authority led to stalemate and something Mr. Henninger calls system malfunction. He noted that this increasingly common condition where nothing works and nothing is resolved has turned America's legendary "can do" into "can't-possibly-do," reinforced by political and bureaucratic inaction. Just think of all the bad roads, crumbling infrastructure, unrealized potential and ludicrous illogic of what used to be patronizingly called a Third World country. Try navigating the tortuous bureaucracies of any government program or riding a taxi in New York.

Ken Fallin

But he also noted something even more insidious: justification of a failing system by creeping euphemism. When did all of these infighting factions become benign "stakeholders," with equal rights, right or wrong? And when did those stakeholders cease to be recognized as special interests, each with its own self-directed agenda? The objective professionalism needed to balance all those agendas in the interest of a more overriding concept in the greater public interest has succumbed to the myth of an "inclusionary" process that goes beyond appropriate consideration of all relevant factors to the ridiculous denial of priorities. In one of those extreme pendulum swings that turns reason into nonsense, a reversal of the old, discredited urban renewal policies that ignored community input has become an abdication of all responsibility for a kind of goofy planning populism. This is affecting everything from the way we build to the buildings we preserve. At Ground Zero, it functioned particularly well as a device for the political evasion of difficult issues, like whether the heart of Lower Manhattan should be a dead or living place, dedicated to a dreadful past or a meaningful future. What we got was an enormously overscaled memorial that overwhelms the site, surrounded by the architectural tokenism of equally enormous, name-brand, commercial buildings. All 10 million square feet of commercial space lost with the twin towers will be replaced, which is ultimately all that matters to those who control the area. What disappeared were any dreams of real physical or spiritual renewal.

What went wrong, in the broadest sense, is that everything meant to turn the area into a symbol of rebirth and regeneration was subverted by political weakness or opportunism and New York's bottom-line, top-dollar mentality; what we have at Ground Zero is an awful marriage of deals and death. What was supposed to be a planning process was actually a huge planning black hole.

Everything that would have enriched and enlivened the area is gone -- the visual and performing arts groups and institutions originally planned and chosen, a variety of public spaces to serve and ameliorate the heavy commercial uses, even the initial focus on the drama of the surviving slurry wall that saved Lower Manhattan from the river. Some features were the casualties of unforeseen complications; others were just let go. The cultural participants were dropped or forced to withdraw. This was the easiest option when there was no one to champion the city's creative assets against the commercial value of the land, or to put the emotional demands and political clout of a group of bereaved families opposed to the presence of cultural institutions as possible sources of disrespect for the dead or controversial interpretations of democracy into the proper perspective of the area's larger destiny. Grief became the unexpected and untouchable third rail that derailed the plan. The ultimate irony was the supine acceptance of precensorship where the nation's freedoms were to be celebrated.

The only reference to the idea of planning was made by occasionally invoking the name of Robert Moses as the man who "got things done." Although it is impossible to overstate the complexity of the problems involved at Ground Zero, what was needed there was not a Robert Moses breaking heads and eggs, but someone more in the mold of Edward J. Logue, the planner who successfully rebuilt New Haven and Boston in the downbeat decades of the 1950s and 60s, and brought Roosevelt Island through conception to completion in New York in the 1970s. After presidents and public officials had walked the smoking ruins of the South Bronx, it was Logue who brought hope and an ultimately successful housing model to the ashes of the infamous Charlotte Street.

Logue was the kind of smart, tough, dedicated professional who would have provided the leadership that Ground Zero needed desperately and never had. Unlike the autocratic Moses, he was a remarkable human being who cared about people as much as he revered the quality of the environment. A practical visionary, he knew how to implement a plan without rolling over to every political constituency and special interest. And he got things done. After decades of turning dreams into reality, he knew a lot about what made cities good places to live and work.

He operated under rules we might not sanction now, using the draconian slum clearance of the 1960s as a tool to revitalize dying cities, but he did it with style and sensitivity. His belief in the future and his willingness to gamble on it was ultimately undone by New York state's "full faith and credit" bonds -- with their risky guarantees backed by the state's word rather than its money; his affordable housing programs, which he believed in and actually built, were the victim of the 1970s recession when he stretched his credit too far.

Logue died in 2000 at the age of 78, and I don't know if we even have his counterpart today. Mention his name to most people and you draw a blank, that is how completely he has been forgotten. It is unlikely that anyone in the city's power structure would recognize his capabilities if they were to meet him now. They wouldn't care; it's not their game.

It was never inevitable that the greatest opportunity growing out of the greatest disaster in the city's history should be so badly squandered. The critical factor that did Ground Zero in was the denial of the professional planning role essential to coordinate and execute an effort of this magnitude, while keeping its priorities and promises alive. Its greatest failure may be the fact that no one appeared to be aware that such a role, person, or process, ever existed. We know all about deals, and that is what we got in the end.

Ms. Huxtable is the Journal's chief architecture critic.

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