Dreams are emerging of a 'new' New Orleans

[Moloch]

Three days after the New Orleans flood walls broke on Aug. 29, a visit to his hometown left Harry Connick Jr. feeling desperate.

"It is hard to sit in silence, to watch one's youth wash away," the singer and piano player wrote on his Web site. "I can only dream that one day she will recapture her glory."

On a follow-up visit a week later, Connick saw things that raised his hopes. Floodwaters were receding, violence was being contained, and at least one bar had reopened on Bourbon Street, where the 37-year-old Connick cut his musical teeth. "Man," Connick wrote, "if this isn't a sign of New Orleans coming back to its former state!"

Maybe. As the shock of one of America's worst natural disaster wears off and floodwaters are pumped out of New Orleans, public figures from local performers to
President Bush are beginning to speak of reviving the 287-year-old city as if such a thing is inevitable.

They are contemplating what urban planner Robert Lang of Virginia Tech says has "never been done before in America": Using what could be hundreds of billions of public and private dollars to rebuild a modern city on a scale far beyond what happened in San Francisco after its 1906 earthquake, or in Chicago after its 1871 fire.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050914/ts_usatoday/dreamsareemergingofanewneworleans

[Missy M]

1. The question is will it be another modern, sterile city with modern...

sterile suburbs. How would that recapture her glory?

[Rude Horner]

2. Unfortunately, it is likely to become...

a disney'ish type replica of what once was. With all the "bad elements" sanitized.

[Rockholm]

3. Those "bad elements" were sent to Houston.

Shipped off to Houston and parts known and unknown. Remember, the poor really have nothing much to return to. It appears the rich will design the new New Orleans to suit their needs.
Hopefully, I am wrong. There is/was such an incredible mix of people in N.O. that deserves rebuilding.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. Yup.

They should have stayed there, in the water.

[saigon68]

27. "bad elements" were sent to Houston a/k/a POOR BLACKS

It will be a Repuke town with Donny Osmond and all the Osmunds marching down the street to the tunes of the music man

[tanyev]

8. I fear you are right.

What the wealthy developers won't recognize is that it is those "bad elements" that gave New Orleans its heart and soul. Centuries of slaves and poor, oppressed people who still managed to express their creativity and joy in a mix of music and mysticism. That's the only New Orleans I'd ever want to see.

[kevin881]

18. yes. sadly....

disney-like and sanitized. just as americans would want it. :(

[ret5hd]

4. The Future of New Orleans...

(i posted this as a response to another thread, but decided to repost it here)

the flooded houses of the poor will be bulldozed. a 2 foot layer of clay will be layed on top, sealing the worst of the poisons in, then a few feet of soil. New housing will be built, but NOT for the poor.

NO will be turned into a mixture of a whitebread playground and "disneyland". The poor service workers will be bussed 50-70 miles daily like in Vail, CO.

A few black trumpet, sax, trombone players will be hired to amuse the tourists as they walk through "A Taste of Old Orleans (tm)" in the French Quarter.

Once a year in Feb or March a staged parade will be held, complete with floats (sponsored by nike and coke), paid revelers dressed extravagantly, a few paid cross-dressers (just raunchy enough to tittilate the crowd, but polite enough to make everything "family friendly") and a few beads thrown from the floats to the polite orderly crowds lined on the sidewalks.

God, i hope i'm wrong...but that's the way i see it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. The rich gotta work somewhere, though... n/t

[Mend]

7. They'll call it "Rapture Land"

Large glass fundie mega churches, alternating with oil refineries and Halliburtin skyscrapers. A small area where blacks entertain but live out-of-town. No gay parades but a nice passion play with a crucifixion reenactment. Pharmacies that sell viagra but no birth control. In other words, Paradise. So much to do, so little time. Are all the poor and black out of there yet?

[Moloch]

12. Most of the gay people in New Orleans lived...

in the French Quarter and Marigny districts.. Those were largely spared from the hurricane. The predominately black areas are the ones that got hit, but many of the people who lived in those areas have never lived anywhere else but New Orleans. I have the feeling a lot of them will be back.

[pitohui]

16. this is a catholic area

why all the negativity

clearly the city must be rebuilt

go to munich, hidden or sometimes very openly in every large building is a photo of what it looked like after ww2

is munich not munich just the same

would you have them in ruins forever because they are a reconstruction

is it sterile

did the fundies move in & crush the catholic spirit

i think not

octoberfest is still there, the ppl are still there

it will be the same in new orleans

don't be so damn negative

rebuilding takes money, let trump & the rest bring their money

[msongs]

25. let the POPE bring the money, he has more than anyone nt

[FormerDittoHead]

9. I'm reminded of Trump's "Steel Pier" in Atlantic City...

They say you can't go back home.

Having grown up in Atlantic City, I was all too disappointed when I went to the new "Steel Pier" in front of one of Trump's casinos to see basically a flat pier with the kind of amusement rides they use at church carnivals with a "next day signs" banner with "TRUMP'S Steel Pier" on it. Why did the casinos have to build everything to look like something BESIDES Atlantic City? In one of the new piers (which is a MALL) they have a "museum" of pictures from the 1800's of the "old" Atlantic City - as if the Atlantic City of the 1950's and 60's never existed...

New Orleans was killed. Plaster walls, cast iron and tin ceilings were destroyed - it costs too much to put anything back except drywall and plastic. They just don't make the old stuff any more, expecially in any great variety, and the kind of skilled labor that was used to build it the right way is now way too expensive (or non-existent).

There WILL be ONE or TWO areas "preserved" simply because the owners had pockets deep enough to do the job right. You can safely expect NOLA to get a "skyline" complete with condos and the "Ragin' Cajun' retirement developments.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. Rebuilding the housing stock...

...is only part of the problem. They need to work to diversify the economy of New Orleans and provide good educational opportunities for its residents, or they'll be left right back where they started - with the working poor in dead-end service sector jobs, living in slums (albeit very new and modern slums.)

[Redstone]

10. So, should they call it "Newer Orleans?"

Redstone

[Barrett808]

22. It should be "New New Orleans," in good sci-fi fashion n/t

[Prisonerohio]

11. One thing I was wondering about was how Katrina opened up

large tracks of land to redevelopment. Are the poor who don't return going to be compensated for there land in some way? I hope so. Remaking New Orleans is going to make a lot of people rich. I see a very different New orleans emerging.

[juajen]

19. Not a lot of poor black homeowners

They mostly rent. Of course, there are exceptions. I would assume, however, that most of those flooded poor houses were owned by rich white people. The people who lost everything will only recover if they were insured or maybe helped by kind people and lots and lots of donations.

If rebuilding is taken entirely out of LA's hands, I do not believe much of the old New Orleans will survive. However, if we are able to wrest cotrol away from the Feds, Blanco will see to a lot of preservation. I suggest everyone support her as much as you individually can, and spread the word that Halliburton is attempting another coup.

Please, please, talk up Kathleen Blanco. She is a very nice and smart lady who they are attempting to skewer. We need to write our congress critters and call as many as we can and protest loudly over this takeover.

[Lochloosa]

13. Has anyone ever been to Celebration, FL

where they blow dead leaves into the trees in the fall, blow fake snow downtown in the winter (in Florida)...

It's a beautiful place. The houses are perfect, not a blade of grass out of place, not a piece of trash on the ground. People drive around in little electric carts....

If your ever in the Orlando area, visit. It is really surreal and I'm afraid that this is the future of NO.

Here is the web site....http://www.celebrationfl.com/

[pitohui]

17. good lord it sounds freaking awful

not a blade of grass out of place, not a piece of trash on the ground

the horror the horror

:eyes:

look new orleans WILL be rebuilt

w. or w.out the negativity & the naysayers

[Lochloosa]

26. I was smoking a cig in the back seat of the car I was in ...no ashtray

I was scared to flick my ashes out the window....I swear that I thought some little robot would pop out of the ground with a broom and a dust pan...not to mention the Cameras!

I was just trying to point out what could happen to NO if Disney decides to sink it's teeth into the rebuilding...

[Moloch]

29. It was bizarre...

I've always wanted to visit Levittown. I think it would be the most surreal community in the U.S. \

[jody]

14. Sweet dreams for some, nightmares for others. n/t

[pitohui]

15. if the japanese can do it we can do it

the japanese rebuilt kobe i'm not seeing why we can't rebuild nawlins a much smaller city if i understand aright

what others have done we can do

we only have to be willing to learn

[Ripley]

21. And don't freaking forget EUROPE!

The had to rebuild everything after WWII.

They'll do it and it will be better. People are making absurd claims about it becoming a Disneyland, or Celebration, FL. Hello? This is not rich white Orlando folks. NO was a black city and they will not turn their city into a place desired by plaid lime green pants wearing, electric golfcart riding, fake leaves in the trees admiring retired insurance adjusters from Indiana. K?

[goforit]

23. I love that inter gallactical photo!!.....& you're right, look at Denmark.

[Ripley]

32. Thanks to Hubble...

The doomed space telescope. The star gas and dust form a beautiful seashell image.

[MarsThe Cat]

39. Denmark doesn't get Cat5 cyclonic storms-

so trying to compare the netherlands to the New Orleans area is ludicrous.

[mcscajun]

40. Um. The Netherlands have nothing to do with Denmark.

They're separate countries, eh?

And, The Netherlands has everything to do with New Orleans...over half of their entire Country is below sea level; "Netherlands" means "low lands". They are the experts at keeping the sea back. We can learn a lot from them.

[americanstranger]

43. Don't be so sure.

Did you see this from the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back?

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

And let's remember that the Supreme Court just ruled on expanded powers of eminent domain.

What's to stop the 'power elite' from pressuring the city of NOLA into claiming the Ninth Ward and other poor sections of the city under the Kelo ruling?

Why do you think Bush wants to spend more on NOLA than the entire Iraq war has cost so far? For the poor people? The ones now in Houston and Utah and Michigan and Oklahoma?

I'm afraid not.

-as

[kskiska]

20. Charlotte, NC, is a victim of urban renewal

Pretty much the entire downtown was bulldozed and spanking new skyscrapers were built in its place. There are beautiful fountains and plazas, and it's bustling with business Monday-Friday, but no one seems to actually live there. On weekends everyone goes back to the suburbs. The restaurants are closed, and the "bad elements" move back onto the streets.

On the other hand, Asheville, NC, stopped the redevelopment just in time and managed to save it's character, salvaging its architecturally interesting downtown. Today its cafés, coffeehouses, and shops are filled seven days a week.

[Lochloosa]

38. Asheville is my absolute favorite city I have ever been to. Period

[GeorgeGist]

28. False glory is the real picture emerging...

from NOLA's past. :puffpiece:

But hey, whatever makes Harry feel better :beer:

[Chico Man]

30. I fear it will be like the LAS Vegas strip

Completely and utterly fake.

[GayCanuck]

31. let me guess.......

a dream city by bush's standards; no minorities and certainly no gays.......

[KamaAina]

33. It's up to us to make sure it's done right!

Especially those of us who live or (like me) have lived there, but also every American who wants to live in a country that still has a soul, all have a stake in making sure that N.O. does NOT become a sterile, corporate, Disney-field "New Orleansland"!

[Bake]

34. For all the whiners: what WOULD you do with NOLA?

You can piss and moan about it being sterile, or Disneyland, or plastic or whatever. No, it won't be the same. Some will be better, some will be worse. What would you DO with the city? Leave it in frickin' ruins?

Some people just want to bitch.

Bake

[KamaAina]

35. I'm working on it, Bake.

Actually I spent a great deal of time envisioning an N.O. of the future while I lived there (early '90s). I just don't have anything concrete to post right now. I have, however, communicated some of it to an old buddy of mine who works for the city and turned up in Houston last week.

But trust me, "leaving it in frickin' ruins" is the absolute last thing on my mind. I gar-rawn-tee it!

[Bridget Burke]

37. If you read the whole article, you will see several opinions.

The question is not whether NOLA should be rebuilt, but how. Some of the visions are chilling.

[maxsolomon]

36. Hire the right people

the right planners, the right architects, the right city process. citizen participation is the key. emphasis must be on density, public transportation, parks, & housing that looks to precedent & tradition. a range of incomes MUST be planned for IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD. avoiding "Celebration"-ness will be tough, but is achievable by emphasizing diversity, particularly in development teams, ON EACH BLOCK.

no parking lots. no parking garages. a walking ciy. the existing city grid will probably work fine as a base.

there are plenty of firms with the skills to guide the process. Looney Ricks Kiss of Memphis. Mithun of Seattle. Duany/Plater-Zyberk of Miami.

[Kashka-Kat]

42. yeah you got it!

Need low cost housing accomodating a true diversity of income levels (which includes the REALLY low or no income folks... not the usual definition of "affordable" which we get, like "at or below 80% of median income")

But still retaining some kind of traditional feel of new orleans.

this will be hard to achieve but not impossible methinks.

in many (most? almost all?) american cities it is actually illegal to build a traditional pre-1940s type of city... i.e. without requisite # of parking stalls, setback from street, wide streets, etc. etc. Urban sprawl is what most city zoning specificies. But this may not be true of New Orleans, being so historical... does anyone know?

In most places the construction industry in cahoots w/ city bureaucrats have their (profitable for them) way of doing things following current zoning laws and it can be really hard to stop or redirect them to more historical or human-scale non-car oriented development. (Speaking from neighborhood activist experience there).

[kath]

41. Las Vegas on the Mississippi. GACK!

[JackDragna]

44. Don't underestimate New Orleans.

The people who lived here are not going to stand for it becoming a land of strip malls and Disney stores. The damage here is extensive, but much of the heart of the city is not beyond repair. It will take some time, but the city will survive.

[jwirr]

45. IF bushie wanted to be fair then he would give housing (HUD)

money for very low interest housing loans for all the victims of NO who lost their homes and allow them to decide where they want to rebuild.

[melody]

46. Think "Disneyland" as in "New Orleans Square"

An all-white, plastic-covered, homogenized rendering of the city that once was. People should set up their own competing "New Orleans"...a real one.

[cyr330]

47. We know what that means

It will full of strip malls and cookie cutter houses just like those hideous suburbs they have down there-- Kenner and Metairie. Part of the charm of New Orleans was its decadent decay. Once it becomes like Disney World, it won't be worth a shit.

[BrklynLiberal]

48. The NEW New Orleans...