This is an expanded version of a comment I made in a diary earlier. What came out of the attacks on the London transport system on 7/7/05 was the impression perhaps best expressed by the 1940 propaganda film "London Can Take It" which was narrated by American Journalist Quentin Reynolds and widely shown in the USA.
The experience of the Blitz and the subsequent near-fetishization of the self-image given by the propaganda was part of what led to the "We are not afraid" campaign that followed 7/7. There had also been subsequent events that had tested the city's resilience which New Yorkers had not had to go through. The shock of the attack was therefore much greater but then so was the extent of the destruction caused to New York compared to London in 2005. In fact, more Britons were killed on 9/11 than 7/7.
While the 9/11 attacks brought down some iconic buildings including taking out part of the subway system, most of the damage caused on 7/7 was confined to the vehicles and immediate area. Most affected was the explosion in the train in the deep level tunnel.
It did a week or more to get the London transit system running properly. Two weeks after 7/7/05 there was an unsuccessful attempt to repeat it, failing because the explosive mix was wrong. I should also mention the tragic killing of Jean Charles De Menezes the day after that when the police mistook him for a suspect.
Another contrast has been made between the extent of the events marking the two attacks. Again this likely reflects both the scale of the attacks and the numbers killed. There were a series of memorial ceremonies this year on the 10th anniversary of 7/7 with a period of silence observed countrywide at the time of the first explosion. There had been similar silences after the country lost 30 people two weeks before that in the shooting in Tunisia. The most moving ceremony was for survivors and relatives at the memorial in Hyde Park in the afternoon.
The tube bombings were not the highest number of deaths at a single station. 30, some believe 31, were killed in a fire at King's Cross station in 1987 when a cigarette caused a fire under a wooden escalator. Since then, smoking has been banned throughout the system and the escalators replaced by all metal ones. In 1943, 173 people were killed at Bethnal Green tube station in a panic rush during the test of air raid alarms. Although the tragedy had been marked by a plaque at the station entrance, a proper memorial to those killed and injured has not yet been completed. In 1996, an IRA truck bomb killed two newspaper vendors at a Dockland Light Railway station in the Canary Wharf complex - I had left work early and had gone that route about an hour before but it shook my windows at home.
So apart from the obvious wartime Blitz experience, there is not the unfamiliarity with such incidents that the USA had experienced. To be honest, the destruction is not always seen as negative (perhaps since 1937 when John Betjeman wrote "Come friendly bombs") Indeed after WWII there was an enthusiasm for tearing down old buildings, whatever their merit, to build in the heroic new modernist style. Betjeman himself help lead the modern "heritage" view of the best but destruction is still seen as an opportunity to build better. Certainly the IRA bombing of central Manchester in 1992 has resulted in the replacement of some pretty awful buildings. The IRA bombing of Bishopsgate in London destroyed the church of St Etheburga-the-Virgin. Afterwards, it was reconstructed as a center for peace and reconciliation. In the same bombing, the old Baltic Exchange building was extensively damage although the best part, the trading floor, was saved and has been sold to a businessman in Tallin, Estonia where it is planned to restore the interior. The rather nondescript building was replaced by Norman Foster's "Gherkin" which has become an iconic building in London. I fully expect that to gain "listed" protected status in the coming years. Richard Roger's nearby Lloyd's Building, built in 1986 was listed Grade 1 in 2011.
I suspect the British system of "listing" buildings of historic or architectural interest - ironically arising from the wartime necessity to identify the most valuable - and a general demand for well designed new buildings are the factors behind the view of the built environment.
The shame of New York is that it has not replaced some significant but pretty poorly designed skyscrapers with a something that could have been so much better. Daniel Libeskind's original design, which won the hearts of New Yorkers, has been bastardized by the Port Authority in the name of more income. In doing so, they have lost almost all of the elements of the design that commemorated the killings and celebrated the city.
Neither should we dismiss the context of the two attacks. 9/11 came as a complete surprise for a population with little knowledge of the Islamic world. The shock provided a justification for the invasion of Afghanistan in both countries however by 7/7 that excuse had been wearing thin. Reaction to it expressed itself in 2003 when perhaps the largest demonstration ever in London was held to protest in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Londoners were therefore more able to distinguish between the actions of a very few extremists and the vast majority of Muslims. It also should be said that there was an understanding of the mindset leading up to the 7/7 attacks although of course certainly neither excusing nor sympathizing with them. There was also a continuation of the feeling of inter-community solidarity from the attacks on a predominantly Muslim area, one with a high Afro-Caribbean population and on a gay bar in Soho carried out by a neo-Nazi extremist in 1999. The last killed three people, including a pregnant woman, at the Admiral Duncan pub.
So two different countries and two quite different sets of experience and traditions. While lessons can be learned from both, they are not a cause of condemnation or lionization of either.