My twenty something daughter said she would work in a rebuilt WTC in a heartbeat. I then asked her if she would want 'her' daughter to work in a rebuilt WTC......she said NO in a heartbeat.
Therein lies the problem, how many families would be stressed beyond belief if a loved one chose to work in the rebuilt WTC.
It took a very long time to get tennants for the WTC before there were terror attacks. Perhaps five equal size buildings would be a better idea.
The twin towers were sheer, exposed, vulnerable. Looking at what was hit on 9/11, the terrorists in their neanderthal simplicity succeeded in hitting only the largest targets possible in the U.S. And they almost missed the Pentagon, apparently hitting the ground before skidding into it. Trying to hit other symbolic icons, e.g. the White House, Statue of Liberty, even the Capitol, would have been very difficult with their brutal method.
The chances they could pull off another similar aerial attack on our soil are now virtually nil. But that's easy to say sitting at your computer far from the danger zone. Even before the attacks, it was a dizzying experience to be on the 99th floor of one of the towers, looking straight down out the window at thousands of feet of freefall. It was human nature to imagine the building tipping over, or the glass breaking and you falling to oblivion, or even an airplane hitting it.
It's nice to think of rebuilding them higher and prouder, but the psychological element of the folks who will actually have to live and work way up there is real. I'll be honest- I wouldn't be thilled to be relocated to the 112th floor of the new WTC.
Any new re-design will have to take this into account. At least make the structure more tapered or pyramidical; wider at the base, more structurally "solid". Reassure NYC's citizens (at least visually) that another collapse would be an impossibility.