Thanks for the link to the new World Trade Center. It will be taller than the original twin towers. By what few snippets of information that I see related to Mayor Bloomberg, I got the impression that there was no new WTC, only a Mosque. Maybe sometime in the past he talked about the building to replace the twin towers.
Given that the NY legislature initiated the building of the original twin towers, I would think that the local jurisdiction (e.g. the mayor) would have some role in the building of the original towers and its replacement.
It makes sense not to rebuild the twin towers exactly where they were originally situated. Also there were design flaws that contributed to the collapse; maybe these flaws cannot be remedied so easily, not to mention dealing with the psychological affects of having the same design, only being told that this time it is okay.
The World Trade Center was conceived in the early 1960s by the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Development Association to revitalize the seedy radio row dominated by electronic stores. Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, founder of the development association, and his brother, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, pushed hard for the project, insisting it would benefit the entire city. In 1962, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began plans to build the center. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates of Michigan was hired as architect. Eventually, Yamasaki decided on two huge towers. Critics charged that a modern monolith would rob New York of character, ruin the skyline, disrupt television reception, and strain city services. However, the project was approved and construction began in 1966. In order to create the 16-acre World Trade Center site, five streets were closed off and 164 buildings were demolished. Construction required the excavation of more than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth, which was used to create 23.5 acres of land along the Hudson River, now part of Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. During peak construction periods, 3,500 people worked at the site. A total of 10,000 people worked on the towers; 60 died during its construction.