How would you rebuild New Orleans?

[Ignacio Upton]

One of the most interesting discussions that will take place over the next decade is how New Orleans should be rebuilt. This, along with the rebuilding of the WTC Site in NYC, will be one of the biggest construction post-disaster projects in history. Here's how I would do it:

1. Consolidate the city and make it dense. Get rid of the a lot of the parking garages and rebuild most of the buildings closer to each other. This will give the city a density similar to NYC or Chicago or Boston. Having a city spread out for the needs of car owners is bad for urban life and socialization.

2. Build new mass transit. New Orleans will probably not be the population of 400,000 it was before the disaster, at least not for a few decades, so reworking mass transit should be done now. Consider a hybrid subway/above ground light rail system similar to the "T" in Boston. Keep buses though, since street cars are difficult to fix, but make bus transit more readily availible to suburbs to reduce the number of cars coming in.

3. New enviromental codes. Introduce "green building" codes that will allow for more energy to be saved in terms of heating, air conditioning, and lighting. Solar panels on top of buildings would be cool, but I'm not sure how much they could improve the consumption of electricity.

4. Make it greener. Plant more trees around the neighborhoods. Rooftop gardens could be encouraged, and some of the low-lying land could be turned into new parkland (therefore reducing the risk to residents in the future since few of them will live there) and wetlands could be restored, acting as natural barriers against new hurricanes.

5. Raise the elevation of the city. Galveston did this after their 1900 hurricane, and Chicago did this after their fire. By raising neighborhoods, New Orleans will have much less damage and far fewer dead when the next big hurricane comes to the City.

6. Encourage taller buildings. This will save space and discourage people from building closer to low-lying areas. There are a lot of 1-2 story building that could be replaced with 5-10 story buildings in the flooded areas.

7. Have unique architecture. Do not try to replicate the French Quarter and make the city like DisneyLand. Hire the most innovative architects (ie. Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano) to design new apartments. But please, NO FRANK GEHRY!!!!!

On edit: 8. New levee system! This is the most important aspect. Hire Dutch engineers and find the most advanced technology possible. Also make it so that the levees can be renovated more often.

[Quakerfriend]

1. Sadly, for the wonderfu people of NO, I feel that it should

largely be restored to wetlands. We must start to recognize the importance of this in our world.

[astonamous]

2. Think outside the box with a better levee system. EOM

[bluestateguy]

3. Rebuild the public schools

You have to do that too. A lot of people with families, who can afford to do so. leave big cities because of bad public schools.

[LSK]

4. most of the homes should be rebuilt as stilt homes like the FL Keys have

for example:





Parking and usually some storage is underneath and the main living quarters is on the 2nd floor.

Restoring the wetlands and improving the levee systems are a given.

[MissWaverly]

5. Ask Jimmy Carter

One of the major problems is that we are not from there, we have not
lived there for generations and the principle of single family dwellings
might work for them, I think rather than making this yet another gold
rush for the corporations, there should be a community wide effort for
a rebuilding on a grand scale, FDR did it with his young workers who
did construction projects, we still have the bridges and projects they
built, if they lasted this long, it will last again, I believe in
empowering people on a massive construction project, I agree that we
need a better system but for the city design, let's ask Holland, their
entire country is below sea level and they are thriving thru a better
design, but I do think that while you can make structural changes, you
cannot rob people of their "identity" New Orleans has to morph into
a home for its people once again not a goldrush for those opportunists
from the land of plenty.

[dcfirefighter]

7. Single family homes

are not a good & efficient use of valuable reclaimed land. You simply can't fit 400,000 people into single family homes and expect them to be serviced by a transit system. You can't fit 160,000 single family in an area without sprawling out into land that should be wetlands. If we want to let those from there 'morph' their city into something else, they need to do it with their own money and on their own time. As it is, I'm paying for it, and will continue to pay for it for years to come.

You lived in a basin on a hurricane prone coast? You lost your home? Here have some of my money and do it again. Fuck that. I see only two reasons that justify spending federal money on new orleans, and only in an environmentally responsible (aka not sprawling single family homes, but rather 3 storey row homes and 4 storey flats and condos)

#1 is the cultural and historical significance of New Orleans
#2 is the fact that most of those people have been fucked six ways from sunday already

Note that I did not include rebuilding the port there. The mississippi should mostly run down the atchafalaya, as nature intended, folks behind flood walls upstream should be evicted from their homes so that the Mississippi can swell and flood and pick up silt and drop it in the delta, as nature intended.

The port can be rebuilt anywhere with deepwater access. Barge traffic is a joke, and economically unviable without huge subsidies and 30 square miles of annual delta erosion. Trains can do anything barges can do, especially since we import more than we export, and imports would have to go upstream. Plus, you can run a wire to an electric train, which you can't do to a barge.

[MissWaverly]

9. What I suggested was a return to a large citizen work corps

Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps which built
dams and Parks and roads all over this country which have stood to this very day, he lead this nation in WWII and he DID not break the bank. I am saying bring in the Dutch to advise on building an effective city at below sea level. I did not assume that all the 400,000 people that fled came from single family residences, I don't know. But what I do know is that there should be wetlands, there should also be a home for the displaced, we have no right to put them into internment camps and to deny them a chance to return to their homes. It is their city, their heritage not ours.

[spacelady]

12. Thank You. Let New Orleanians decide. The "identity" factor is

a reality that cannot be ignored or trumped by outsiders who "think they know what's best".

[MissWaverly]

15. Thank you, I feel like New Orleans is a sister city to Baltimore

My neighbor across the street has lived in the same house for 40 years,
this little street is her whole world, she rarely goes down to the
downtown area, I cannot imagine a bunch of corporations deciding where
and how she should live w/o any input from her. We live in 2 story brick rowhouses here.

[spacelady]

16. Exactly right, otherwise would be an insult to those citizens.

They can be open to ideas, but the final say should fall to those who live there.

[MissWaverly]

18. thanks

I think that people would care more about what they have a say in
planning, I am sure no one wants a replay of "Superdome" II.

[dcfirefighter]

6. Were I the benevolent dictator

See: transit nodes, overall topology,

#1 Make it largely automobile free, with trams and dedicated truck lanes. Leave large groups of several city blocks carfree, or at least car free outside a few morning delivery hours. Allow for electic pallet movers and emergency vehicles, of course. Connect city transit to passenger railways and local airports.

This would allow for a better use of land (40-50% of urban land is dedicated to cars) which economizes on the amount of land that needs to be raised.

#2 I'd condemn (and pay for) the entire site, and place the land in a federal land trust. I'd raze any buildings that were severely damaged and without historical merit, as well as obsolete public housing, and areas in need of parks and other public infrastructure. Any buildings not razed would be returned to their owner.

#3 Any vacant land would be assigned through open auctions for long term ground rents, with an annually increasing rate. Land under existing owned buildings would be offered at an appraised value.

#4 The land rents would fund public services in NO, public safety, public transit (free trams in the carfree districts), public schools, levees, pumps, etc.

#5 A portion of the land rents would be used to offset Louisiana state taxes as assessed against buildings. Another portion would offset sales taxes.

#6 Any excess would be divided evenly among the permanent residents of NO, including, for a period of one year, those who were residents immediately prior to Katrina.

The net effect would be:
No taxes on buildings - lots of new buildings, which means building space is relatively inexpensive, for businesses, jobs, and housing.
Lots of money for government - think how much money goes to pay for land today, paid in response to no ones labor, only paid to someone who got there first.

I know that in the District of Columbia, annual increases in land value have exceeded the 'state' and local government budget for the last 10 years, and that the annualized land price would pay for government and an additional Citizen's Dividend or Guaranteed Minimum Income of almost $5,000 per person ($20,000 per family of 4).

New Orlean's real estate probably wasn't as valuable as DC's but then again 40% of DC's land isn't taxable due to the Federal Gov't, Sovereign Nations, and other exemptions. Also, I'd bet, after reconstruction, New Orleans's land will be quite valuable.

[MissWaverly]

11. I just had an idea based on your idea

since flooding is a problem would it be easier to build a
"Venice" on the site, leave some "canals" flooded and use them
for transportation, use boats for transit, I live in
Baltimore, and we have water taxis.

[elfin]

8. Slowly

With great attention to the wetlands and other environmental issues such as the configuration of the mouth of the Mississippi.

The touritsy French quarter will come back soon - then concentrating on the port with the support personnel to run it.

Then and only then the rest.

New Orleans will never again be the "Big Easy" - just hard, hard, work to build the foundation upon which it MAY reconstitute itself as the multicultural energy source of so much of our arts/culture inspiration.

[jim3775]

10. Ask the Dutch what to do

and follow their advice.

[spacelady]

14. By Jove, I think you may be on to something!

[Selatius]

13. I agree with what you said

In cities like Paris, it is much easier to get around on foot or through mass transit than it is in sprawling nightmares where you cannot get anywhere without burning gas in a car or sitting in traffic. Of course, Paris was built before the invention of the car, so naturally you have a denser city than more modern ones because it was built around people and foot traffic, not cars and car traffic. If New Orleans is to be rebuilt, let it be rebuilt so that it is more people friendly.

[Seabiscuit]

17. With Lincoln Logs?

:think:

At least that's probably the first idea to pop into Shrub's fetid grey matter.