"Why should we bother rebuilding New Orleans?", part 2

You never know what's going to grab people. My response to Chris Beck's Oregonian op-ed got linked to by both Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury, as well as a few other places. It also got some comments from a couple of people who are both more qualified to opine (and more measured on the topic) than I.

One is a civil engineer named Tim, who operates his own Tim's Nameless Blog:

[We have to] recognize that New Orleans is a port--one of the most significant ports in America and the most important port on the largest river in North America. So unless somebody invents urban levitation, yes, it's going to be close to sea level. Some people want to flip off New Orleans and say they're stupid to live so close to the water. But it seems obvious to me who is stupid when they criticize a port city for being on the water!

Now these are just scratching the surface. I think it's also important to remember that New Orleans is almost 300 years old. And in 300 years, it's been flooded by the Mississippi River and battered by hurricanes with some regularity. But somehow the city has survived. And thrived. And grown. It strikes me as either total cowardice or more likely laziness for any 21st century American to whine, "Oh, protecting New Orleans will be too hard and too difficult. Why can't they eat their little french donuts in Cleveland?"

But here's the real reason New Orleans will be saved: BECAUSE WE CAN. I said earlier that this was a trick question, and I believe it is because it presupposes that this is an impossible mission or a lost cause. I say it is very possible to protect New Orleans. Look at the Mississippi River levees. New Orleans has been safe from annual flooding from the river for going on 80 years. IT CAN BE DONE. Look at London and Amsterdam and Rotterdam--all major cities BELOW SEA LEVEL, facing the same sea level rise predictions as we are. They just weathered a big storm and closed the sea gates near Rotterdam to successfully protect their prize port city. IT CAN BE DONE.

Yeah you rite, Tim.

The other is from Alan Gutierrez, executive director of the Think New Orleans nonprofit, who wrote his own editorial rebuttal to Beck:

He’s the sort that gives preservation a bad name. He truly cares more about the houses than the families within them. He is one of those visionaries who wants to take the “opportunity” to “shrink the footprint” of New Orleans. The summer of 2006 was spent in endless planning processes where people abandoned by their insurance companies and their government where tormented with the task of proving the viability of their neighborhoods....

At the heart of it is this urban planning notion of Shangra-La is a magical New Orleans cleansed by the waters of Katrina. A New Orleans without crime and without poverty. All the pretty buildings survive but none of the suburban style development like Lakeview, Gentilly or East New Orleans. If we could bulldoze those houses, they’re owners would have to come and live by the river in historic homes in the Treme that they’d have to restore. We’d be a city of Bob Vilas.

Or perhaps, a childless young city living in the new riverfront developments.

I love New Orleans’ historic architecture. I also love that New Orleans is just as New Orleanian in neighborhoods composed of ranch houses as as it is in those composed of double shotguns. It’s not the architecture that makes New Orleans a great city, it is the people.

And that was precisely what was missing from Beck's play-pretty, Utopian prescription for what ails New Orleans: a sense of, and a respect, for the people involved.

Comments

[liprap]

Yes, indeed. As a NOLA resident, I'm glad there are folks such as yourself in the world. Keep it up!

[GentillyGirl]

As a native of New Orleans, I give thanks to you folk out there in the world that do understand the need for us here to get our city and it's folks back.

You know what New Orleans means.