Thoughts on Rebuilding NOLA and Southeast Louisiana


It is important for the people of New ORleans to reflect before rushing to rebuild everything. A development pattern of auto-centric sprawl, and the resource extraction industries that supported it, created the conditions for this disaster to occur. New Orleanians need to understand this in order to make a well-informed decisions about what to understand this in order to make well-informed decisions about what and how to rebuild. This was not an act of God and not a natural disaster - this was a Public Policy Disaster. Consider these broad suggestions:

New Orleans should be rebuilt ina limited way that recognizes and respects the lay of the land. The portion of the city along the natural levee of the Mississippi River, and south along the Metairie-Esplanade-Chef Ridge, should be rebuilt. These largely intact portions of the city should be densified into a port city with University, fishing, shipbuilding and tourist components. UNO should be moved to the CBD, to take the place of the high-rises along Poydras St. which will be emptied. A great University focused on urban sustainability, the arts, history, and engineering should be established. The World has much to learn from this disaster. New Orleans should teach the World.

The city should be rebuilt for the people who built it before the storm, and who will build it again. That is, the bus drivers, the teachers, the waiters, the artists and musicians, the carpenters, the craftworkers, the dockworkers, the nurses, and the laborers. It should NOT be rebuilt for real estate speculators, hotel barons, or the petrochemical industry.

The vast majority of Greater New Orleans, including most of the West Bank, Metairie, Kenner and New Orleans East, should be razed and converted to backswamp. This backswamp would absorb future surges, as well as the rains of afternoon thunderstorms. A civil conservation corp would be established to...(continued in Messages)