Myriad questions persist, making solutions elusive
There is no model for recovering from a natural disaster of Katrina's magnitude.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
NEW ORLEANS -- "It's either the beginning of New Orleans or the end of New Orleans."
A casual remark, lobbed across the bar at the Bridge Lounge in the Lower Garden District, that captures the apocalyptic mood hovering over this most buoyant of American cities.
New Orleans, the Big Easy, has become the Big Question Mark. Can -- or should -- it rebuild? Can it reinvent its economy, or will it continue to accept whatever development deal comes along? Will its leaders pursue alternative futures or retreat to their secretive, almost feudal habits?
In the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters in American history, residents respond to these questions with shrugs and upturned palms. Where do you start when all systems have failed?
The sweep of Katrina's wrath -- more than 1,000 deaths, 50,000 homes destroyed, 160,000 jobs lost, 300,000 evacuees -- has produced the ultimate disaster diagram. All the critical vectors -- ecology, economics, education, race, politics, planning -- are simultaneously in play, converging and colliding. Nothing can be isolated; everything is connected. Push this, and that moves.
Equity question
At the Oct. 24 meeting of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, a blue ribbon group Mayor Ray Nagin created to lead the effort, co-chairwoman Barbara Major asked, "How do you rebuild a city with equity? There is no manual."
In a city where the most ravaged neighborhoods are primarily black, and the economy more Third World than America, equity is a powerful issue.
For that reason, Mayor Ray Nagin pledged to "rebuild the entire city of New Orleans," meaning the Lower Ninth Ward as well as the exclusive Garden District. Some in the room applauded, but others booed, shouting "cooperation, not corporation" and "no profiteering from disaster." The heckling reflected a widespread fear that the commission is merely a front for real estate and development interests intending to rebuild the city without involving residents.
The mayor counterpunched with statistics about improved water, sewer and electrical service, about more cops on the street and faster debris removal, while deflecting questions about how many billions it ultimately will take to rebuild New Orleans, or where the money will come from.
Fundamental problems
He returned to the Sheraton two days later to say that the city would be broke by March, have no conventions until April, that its cruise ship business had sunk, and that "Washington is very skeptical, so if we don't come together, we are going to get left behind."
Congress has allocated only a small portion of the $250 billion in federal aid some Louisiana lawmakers want, partly out of wariness of the city's legendary history of corruption. Since President Bush declared in September, "We will do what it takes" to rebuild New Orleans, support for a massive spending bill largely has evaporated on Capitol Hill.
If solutions are elusive, the problems are not. Safety, housing, education, economic development, planning and politics are on everyone's list. Without fundamental changes, experts insist, rebuilding New Orleans will be more a theoretical exercise than a real one, SimCity for consultants.
Repairing the levees
Topping the "must do" list is repairing the levees. Unless residents believe that they will hold, that history won't repeat itself, banks won't write mortgages; the government won't provide flood insurance; developers won't invest, and companies won't expand. This is the physical and psychological sine qua non that makes everything else possible.
"The physical safety of New Orleans has to be established," says Allen Eskew, a prominent New Orleans architect and urban planner, "and that means bringing the levees up to Category 5 status."
The Corps of Engineers says it will stabilize the levees by next summer's hurricane season, but, at best, that means protection from storms only up to Category 3. Experts say it will take $20 billion and more than 10 years to achieve Category 5 protection.
But others see the concentration on levees as shortsighted.
"It's a mistake to focus only on levees," says Mark Davis, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. "Levees are only one part of a solution. We should be looking at protection that endures and that doesn't rely totally on what we are able to engineer and maintain."
A smaller city
Davis estimates that Katrina caused 50 years' worth of land loss along the Gulf Coast in 24 hours, 100 square miles in Southeast Louisiana alone. Scientists say that, with rising ocean temperatures, the number and intensity of hurricanes will increase and even greater losses can be expected in the future.
Before Katrina, New Orleans' population was approximately 470,000; today it is down to 150,000, only half of whom remain in the city overnight. The rest have scattered across the country, many never to return.
There is little doubt that the new New Orleans will be a smaller city, with a population of perhaps 250,000 and a significantly contracted economy. The tougher question is whether it will -- or should -- shrink physically as well, becoming denser, more compact and more urban.
History offers some clues. The footprint of New Orleans in 1878 and the unflooded areas after Katrina are virtually identical. In 19th century New Orleans, development was confined to the higher ground on the east bank of the Mississippi (the Vieux Carre, the Garden District), while the areas that flooded in 2005 (the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East and Lakeview) were uninhabited cypress swamp. Earlier residents knew what the river and the tides could do and built defensively.
People, politics and history
All of which suggests an orderly retreat to higher ground. If New Orleans were merely an abstract planning problem, detached from people, politics and history, that is probably what would happen. The city would write off New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth Ward and parts of Lakeview, compensate and relocate the property owners, and turn the abandoned land into parks, wetlands and playing fields. The goal would be to reinforce the historic core of the city, with its dense, mixed-use development laid out along transit lines.
The red lining proposition is being floated -- discreetly -- at city hall. The Rand Corporation, a well-regarded think tank, has reportedly volunteered to do demographic analysis on which neighborhoods are most likely to bounce back. But everyone is nervous about it.
Joseph Canizaro, a major developer and chair of the planning committee of the mayor's commission, thinks that increasing density is "smarter than continuing to build farther and farther out." He also thinks discussion of red lining is premature.
"The people in the Lower Ninth and New Orleans East are determined to come back, so it's hard to think about abandoning those areas," he says.
But New Orleans is the least abstract of cities. It is all about people, politics and history, quirky juxtapositions and exotic textures. Almost 80 percent of its residents were born there, higher than any major city in America. With the pull of home so powerful, what seems like a logical, even inevitable planning proposition becomes a political nightmare.
"In areas without historic buildings that flood, it may make economic sense to scrape things clean," says New Orleans architect and historian Robert Cangelosi. "But how do you tell a little old lady in New Orleans East that you're going to turn her property into a golf course? You'd never be re-elected."
Planning rarely drives policy. Politics does. And over the next few months, New Orleans will almost certainly witness a succession of High Noon confrontations between the two over the future form of the city.
Housing priority
"Our No. 1 priority is housing, our No. 2 is housing, and after that, at No. 3, we'd put housing." So spoke Vice Admiral Thad Allen, the Gulf Coast Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But what type of housing does New Orleans need? FEMA has set up thousands of trailers in empty lots and abandoned shopping centers, but trailer parks are no solution to the housing crisis. That will require a sophisticated and comprehensive initiative, which the city hasn't begun to formulate.
For preservationists, everything starts with the historic neighborhoods, with their eclectic mix of houses, stores, restaurants and funky bars, that are as different from the suburban version as Louisiana red beans and rice is from Uncle Ben's.