More than five years after the September 11 attacks, the last major obstacle to rebuilding at Ground Zero has been cleared, opening the way for New York to once again reinvent its dramatic skyline.
Developer Larry Silverstein reached a two-billion-dollar deal with seven insurance companies last week to settle all outstanding disputes, ending years of bitter wrangling, multi-million-dollar lawsuits and costly delays.
Silverstein, who took over the lease of the downtown New York complex just two months before the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, said after the deal was announced: "This train is now moving down the tracks."
The only building at the site of the attacks so far to have been completed is 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story office tower that replaced one of the buildings destroyed when hijacked planes ploughed into the Twin Towers.
The next major part of the multi-billion dollar reconstruction likely to be complete is a transit hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
Featuring what critics have labelled a stegosaurus-shaped station that allows light to filter down to the platforms below, it is due to open in 2009.
A memorial complex known as "Reflecting Absence" is also due to open in 2009 featuring two square voids in the footprint of the original Twin Towers. Waterfalls on all four sides of the shafts feed into pools below.
The largest part of the reconstruction plan being overseen by architect Daniel Libeskind is the Freedom Tower, which is due to be completed in early 2011. Construction on the skyscraper began last year after a series of delays.
The 541-meter tower by David Childs contains almost a quarter of a million square meters (2.6 million square feet) of floor space and symbolically stands 1,776 feet tall - the year of the US declaration of independence.
Other parts of the reconstruction include Tower Three, a 71-story steel and glass office block designed by Richard Rogers featuring diamond-shaped external struts, and Tower Four, a minimalist construction by Fumihiko Maki.
Both are due to be completed in 2011, while Tower Two, a Norman Foster-designed 78-story tower that will be the second tallest skyscraper in New York after the Freedom Tower is due to be up by the following year.
A fifth tower could eventually form part of the complex but is not so far included in the plans.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg described last week's deal between the insurance companies and Silverstein as a major step forward in efforts to redevelop the World Trade Center site and rebuild lower Manhattan. But other disputes, most pressingly the health of emergency workers who sifted through the rubble of the Twin Towers after the September 11 attacks, continue to drag on.
New York City's medical examiner last week for the first time officially linked the death of an office worker to exposure to toxic dust released when the towers collapsed, increasing the death toll to 2,750.
Hundreds of emergency responders have also reported severe respiratory conditions that many believe to have been caused by breathing fine particles of dust and toxins at the site during the months-long clean-up operation.
The medical examiner's ruling is expected to increase pressure on city authorities to re-examine the deaths of dozens other people who died of illnesses believed to be related to the attacks.
Bloomberg has played down concerns that the decision could lead to dozens of other people being ruled 9/11 casualties - something that could have potentially far reaching legal and financial implications for the city. "Think of it as though somebody had ... a beam fall on them and it just took a little while for them to succumb to their injury," he said last week.
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