Weblogsky: Dreaming a New New Orleans

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Dreaming a New New Orleans

WorldChanging contributor Alan AtKisson worked with regional leaders in New Orleans on a plan for southeast Louisiana's future, sponsored by Greater New Orleans, Inc. Alan says his team had to overcome a surprising sense of fatalism within the region before the project could move forward. But "there was hope stirring in the city"...

When we recently updated the indicators for Top 10 by 2010, we were ourselves amazed to discover that whatever was happening in New Orleans was quickly being noticed elsewhere. In just three years, on the Forbes/Milken list of Best Places for Business and Careers, the New Orleans region had climbed from number 194 (out of 200) to number 110, a jump of 84 places. Suddenly, cracking the Top 10 by the year 2010 -- a goal that looked wildly ambitious and unrealistic in 2001 -- actually seemed possible.

Now "the worst has happened. The city has, in functional terms, been destroyed. Fatalism has had its ultimate day....From here forward, New Orleans can choose its own fate." Alan suggests five principles for building a "bright, green, safe New Orleans." [Link]

A New New Orleans must be a city dedicated to the genuine well-being of all her citizens. Poverty had been reduced in the 1990s; but pockets of terrible, entrenched poverty were still far too common in that city prior to its deluge. Those pockets are the one thing that must not be restored; instead, the city must charge into rebuilding with an eye to reducing poverty drastically, by reducing the conditions that create it. The now-destroyed, once-crumbling houses in the 9th Ward (the poorest section of the city) must be replaced with decent, modern, and yes green housing (see below). The people who live in New Orleans must be employed in rebuilding it, thereby gaining marketable skills in the process.

While simple morality should make this principle clear and sufficiently compelling, it also behooves the nation to rebuild the city in a way that uplifts even its poorest residents, for simple security reasons. The alternative is chaos, and the scenes of looting, shooting, armored vehicles and violence that followed eerily in the hurricane's wake are but a foreshadowing of what New Orleans could become, semi-permanently, if a truly visionary and socially just rebuilding does not occur.

jon posted this at 6:41 PM
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Comments

This reminds me of Doc Searls' assessment of the disaster, as being worsed by the loss of a conservative mentality.
http://doc.weblogs.com/2005/09/01#prophesies

Posted by: Bryan Alexander | September 2, 2005 11:17 PM

That's a great one, and worth quoting:

The article spreads blame all over the place, but the common cause is an utter lack of what when I was growing up we called conservation, a value that was then also tied without irony to conservatism, a movement that has since moored itself to short term economic growth at all costs, political paranoia, military adventurism and a narrow understanding of markets as arenas where large companies fight over political and economic spoils, and human values (such as paying living wages to employees) are punished.
This event will change the country as much as 9/11 did, and perhaps even more so. After Katrina, we will again begin investing in real homeland security, real infrastructure, real caring for the civilizing natures of vital cities and family farms, of small towns and real communities, and government bodies that care more about their people than the high-dollar sources of election funding.

Posted by: Jon Lebkowsky | September 2, 2005 11:25 PM