The new New Orleans

Rebuilding by not rebuilding

Although their full recommendation will not be out until January, Mayor Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission have recently announced one aspect of their plan for rebuilding New Orleans: don’t rebuild parts. Wow.

Local developer Joe Canizaro on Tuesday said he and other appointees to the Bring New Orleans Back commission agree that some floodprone parts of the city should be returned to wetland, a key recommendation from the Urban Land Institute that has drawn protests from many residents and the politicians who represent
them.

These areas include “large sections of eastern New Orleans and Gentilly, the northern part of Lakeview, and parts of the Lower 9th Ward, Mid-City and Hollygrove.”

The plan calls for no building in these areas until environmental and hurricane-protection studies demonstrate that they are safe.

Canizaro has also mentioned the idea of having people rebuild wherever they want for the next three years and, then, go from there. If people decided they didn’t want to live in their old neighborhood, they could get the pre-Katrina value of their home to rebuild in a neighborhood that was flourishing once again.

To me, allowing people to rebuild where they want seems like the only reasonable choice.

The commission is worried about the city being able to sustain itself. Well guys, if you tell life-long residents (who are obviously extremely loyal to the city) that they can’t move back to the neighborhood they have always lived in, then I can almost guarantee you that they aren’t coming back.

I feel like this is a prime example of mixed messaging yet again. I’ve talked about the Medical School doing it (see previous post) but the entire city is demonstrating this as well.

In my blog class, we started a discussion about what is really the root problem of all rebuilding efforts in New Orleans: mixed messaging. The city wants to present this persona of “Come back. Let’s party. We are open for business,” hence the continuation of Mardi Gras and the French Quarter opening up so quickly.

However, at the same time, we are begging for money that we desperately need. Citizens, just the other day, testified about how horrible their lives are right now to Congress. These messages are not agreeable. You can’t really say both but some would argue that the city has to.

After all, we need tourists for businesses to be able to stay profitable but, at the same time, we need for businesses to be able to open at all. Its almost like city officials are scared that if people can’t come visit within these first few months, they will never come again.

I do not think this is true. Tourists want to return. They want to be a part of the celebration of the city but the city needs to be celebrating when they come. We need amenities and tourist destinations when they show up so that they are impressed enough to return again.

More importantly, we need this money. If federal aid is not large enough, New Orleans will never re-open and will never flourish again. The state can’t handle the burden.

From all of that, to me it seems we should continue to emphasize the “we need help now” card until we really get help. That is the card we should play until every resident is sleeping in some sort of housing, until major businesses are able to reopen and until every child is in a fully functioning school. The problem is that is going to take years and we can’t afford to wait that long for tourism and business.

It looks, to me, like the mixed messaging must continue to some extent. That scares me. I sincerely hope we get relief before people get tired of hearing about our problems (some already have which is why Katrina recovery makes the front page less and less) while also hearing about how we are open for business. That could mean major troubles.

Thoughts on this?

posted by Jessie Tucker @ 12/14/2005