Thinking about "Rebuilding New Orleans."

Conventional wisdom on the left (see Nathan Newman and Avedon Carol, for example) seems to assume that even thinking about the future of New Orleans is some sort of nefarious (as if there is any other sort) right-wing plot. I differ and will be encouraging discussion of if/how/when New Orleans should be reconstructed. (Btw, I more or less take for granted that other cities/towns in the Gulf should be rebuilt, and with national aid. It is solely's New Orleans's elevation relative to the surrounding waters which offers long-term concern.)

Here's a good start to the discussion:

Should New Orleans Get Rebuilt And Who Should Pay For It?
(and don't miss the comments to the post.)

In the coming debate on what to do about New Orleans keep in mind that another category 5 hurricane could hit the city next year or 5 or 10 years from now. Should billions of dollars in federal aid go into rebuilding the city? Or should the rebuilding aid be held back with money first spent on building levees and other anti-flood measures? Or should the homes in the flooded parts not get rebuilt and should the city just shrink in size into defensible borders?

Keep in mind that it would be a whole lot quicker to rebuild the houses of NO than to rebuild levees or, more importantly, rebuild the wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi. Assuming for a (wild!) moment that money is no object, then it would seem to me that the logical process would be to wait to rebuild the destroyed neighborhoods of NO until the area is reasonably flood-proofed. Since wetland reconstruction seems to be an integral part of that process, and such wetland reconstruction would (I assume) take decades...well, do you see the issue? You can't rebuild the flooded parts of NO for years. It is not as easy as simply saying "Of course! Shove it, Denny Hastert! Let's rebuild." It would be criminal to encourage people to move back into flood prone areas until they are safe -- and that will take years and years. So the practical problems of reconstruction, once you strip-away the comforting rhetoric, are not easy.

UPDATE: And it seems to me that the key principle -- and I find it amusing that I would use this usually cant-laden word -- to inform such rebuilding of New Orleans is that it should be "sustainable" -- both economically and ecologically.

Economically: New Orleans should not expect, nor want to expect, that on an-going basis, once the reconstruction is more-or-less complete, support for its civic infrastructure would need particular subsidy from the rest of the nation above that level of Federal support given to every city & town.

Ecologically: The people of New Orleans should not be subject to the terror of floods and such flood-proofing must be done in a manner which works with nature rather than attempting to contain such enormous forces. So the rebuilding of the wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi, which seem to be without dispute a major factor,  must be part of the rebuilding.

Do these principles make sense?

I am not trying to create preconditions which would discourage or make impossible the rebuilding of New Orleans but merely trying to think through the process.

 

Comments

[Person of CHoler]

Seattle-based urban planners should forget about New Orleans and start thinking about the effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions on their own city.

See, for example, http://www.pnsn.org/CascadiaEQs.pdf and note especially the comments about the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

[Oscar Chamberlain]

I agree that we do need to start discussing this. I made an attempt to do so a few days ago,[ see http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/15003.html] but you've got far better knowledge and credentials to push such a conversation forward.

Clearly something will be rebuilt there. It's size, shape, and purpose are left to be determined, and although nature plays a powerful role in this, as you point out, people by water have been struggling with nature for a long long time. I do hope that the people of New Orleans, and of Lousiana as a whole, get a strong say in this. My fear is that this will become a plaything of competing experts and national politicians, with locals reduced to the role of supplicants.

[Dianna]

I'm hoping the rebuilding of New Orleans is going to be very innovative. It is a fabulous chance to throw out the bad, keep the good and make it an even better port city. There was a good discussion of ideas for the city in a radio interview on Chicago's WGN radio - 720 show with Milt Rosenberg.
http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/ex720/Audio/index.html

[Murph]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I agree that "Clearly something will be rebuilt there," but most of my talking has been disagreeing with the people who say, "It will be rebuilt, just like it was before! Right away or faster!"

I think that any city rebuilt there should/will be smaller that what the city was two weeks ago - my key premise, though, is that much of what was there existed in a form that made sense as marginal additions of (personal/corporate/civil) capital to a large existing body of capital over 300 years of existance, but that wouldn't make sense as a massive, one-time investment (as rebuilding everything "back the way it was" in the span of 10-20 years could be considered), and that physical rebuilding should be considered as a new city grown out of the rootstock of what's salvageable from Old New Orleans, and not as a replication of what there was.

My assumptions include a very pessimistic view of what's going to be salvageable after the levees are rebuilt and the city drained, such that replication would involve a fairly high rebuilt:existing ratio; a pessimistic view of how likely this is to happen again soon; and an extremely high valuation of not putting hundreds of thousands more people in so vulnerable a position.

I also disagree with arguments that it must be built back exactly the way it was in order for the soul of the city to survive.

[Avedon]

Excuse me, but where did I say that "even thinking about the future of New Orleans is some sort of nefarious [...] right-wing plot"? We're all thinking about the future of New Orleans, and as far as I can tell, reclaiming the wetlands is what most people want to see. (And I don't see how that can be a right-wing plot, since the right-wing has mostly promoted the idea that even mentioning "wetlands" is some kind of airy-fairy left-wing mania).

The discussion at The Sideshow has been about whether allowing people to die for the sake of anticipated urban planning was merely indefensible stupidity or also indefensible callousness.

[David Sucher]

Avedon, I read your dismissal of Hastert's remarks as dismissal of the idea that New Orleans should NOT be rebuilt and that such an idea was so stupid that it should not even be considered. All Hastert was suggesting, so I understood, was that it might not be a good idea to reconstruct New Orleans below sea level. Sounded like a fair question to me. I am sorry if I misunderstood you but that was clearly my take on your sentence.

You wrote: "Hastert tries to look better after making stupid remarks about New Orleans."

According the WaPo:

'Asked whether it made sense to spend billions of dollars rebuilding a city that lies below sea level, he [Hastert] told the paper, "I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me." '

I don't think that what Haster said was so stupid; apparently you did/do.

That meant to me that you were you suggesting that "even thinking" very freely about the future of New Orleans -- which would include the no-build alternative -- was a dumb idea.

Again, sorry if I misunderstood. Did I?

[Chris Burd]

Has anyone called up Daniel Libeskind?

[Avedon]

No, I was referring to the crass suggestion of "bulldozing" New Orleans. That's a little different from "just thinking" about "rebuilding" New Orleans.

The astonishing lack of feeling for the people of NOLA that has underpinned every decision and so many of the public statements of the administration and their minions is stunning a lot of Bush's most ardent supporters into recognizing that there is really something wrong with the way this administration thinks. It scarcely matters what their ultimate plan for NO is; it simply doesn't occur to them that such blatant, crass inhumanity has no place in the public discourse at this time. Their reaction to the flood was consistent, and it's clear that they decided to let people die. Just let them die. To casually talk, at this time, about bulldozing New Orleans exemplifies that kind of thinking.

They had a plan, and that plan cast thousands of American civilians as mere collateral damage. Hammering them for every piece of evidence that this is the way they think is not an objection to urban planning, it's an objection to inhumanity.

[Dennis]

There is merit in most of the arguments to rebuild the wetlands and making NO a sustainable city. I have seen very little mention of practical ways to rebuild the housing areas where most of the flodding occured. There is a solution as close as the Keys in Florida.
Any new construction in the Keys must be elevated on pilings to the second floor and the bottom floor can not be built up to allow water flow with any surge.Of course, this also assumes that the building permits are enforced in a very corrupt city.
Because of the levee system, there will be a minimal surge even with a Cat 5 hurricane because the flood will enter more slowly and even after a flood event the clean up would be greatly reduced. Without this kind of plan I do not support any expenditure of tax dollars when the question is not if but when will the next catastrophic flood event occur.

[Jim]

I think it makes sense for house boats to be used, rather than single wide mobile homes. Both for FEMA supplied trailers and for homeowners wanting a safer design for the next time New Orleans fills up with water.

I was thinking that a houseboat with one or more strong anchor chains attached to it, the anchor chains cemented in the ground, and also a way to secure the houseboats by anchor chain higher up the chain near the top of the anchor chain, so that hurricane winds do not blow the houseboats over, but that you can then detach the short anchoring, leaving the long anchor lines in place, so that when New Orleans fills up with water, the house boats merely float at the surface, attached to their anchor lines so they don't float away, and when the water subsides they settle back down. Then they are put back onto their properties by cranes and the short anchoring is secured again.

The result is way less financial losses and disruption to homeowners and to the City. Property fences would need to be pretty low or nonexistent, so that when the house boats settle down, they are not resting crooked on a fence.