Commissions Slow Post‑Disaster Recovery

Large, state‑led redevelopment commissions with access to public funds are prone to capture by competing interest groups and political logrolling, which can turn rebuilding into years of bargaining over unrelated giveaways and memorial designs rather than rapid economic recovery. In the Ground Zero case, years of delay and diversion of priorities meant the site followed the private‑sector resurgence rather than leading it. — This reframes disaster‑recovery policy: rebuilding governance structure (who has the decision rights) matters as much as money, and ceding prime redevelopment to politicized commissions can harm economic and civic recovery.