Climate change will pose increasing challenges to city planners dealing with areas especially vulnerable to the elements. In the aftermath of a devastating natural disaster in an urban locale prone to events of a similar magnitude, the knotty question becomes whether to rebuild decimated structures or relocate them to safer sites.
It is a brave urban planner who will advocate relocation, for few displaced individuals take kindly to being uprooted, even if they know they will likely face further crippling blows from nature if they fail to move to a more secure address.
One such bold individual is noted city planner Edward Blakely. An American expatriate, Dr. Blakely was recruited from Australia by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to restore the city to some semblance of normality in the wake of ferocious Hurricane Katrina.
As recounted in his new book, My Storm (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), Blakely faced a daunting task in engineering the recovery of a ravaged city entirely below sea level, and thus significantly exposed to major hurricanes no matter how sturdy the surrounding protective levees.
In his revealing book, Blakely quoted Judith Curry, chair of the Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She predicted that "a hundred years from now, there is no way New Orleans is going to be here. ... This is just the way geology and climate work."
If that were not enough to intimidate Blakely, he had to deal with a historic sense of doom stretching back to pre-Civil War days. It was then that a prominent civic engineer took note of New Orleans' precarious location and commented, "It would be a service to sweep away the city with all its boarding houses, grog shops, and music to boot."
Yet Blakely soldiered on, enduring widespread criticism for steering reconstruction away from much of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, whose low lying sections were the most vulnerable to repetitive wipeouts in a city itself extraordinarily exposed to nature's wrath.
Many urban planners will face the same dilemma as Blakely in the years ahead, given that flooding episodes will grow with the intensification of storms and rise of sea levels due to global warming. A recent U.S. Geological Survey report confirms the mounting challenge with its disclosure that sea levels are increasing three to four times faster along the densely populated mid-Atlantic coast than elsewhere in the world.
Will urban planners have the guts to sound the retreat, and if so, will they be ignored until there is no choice but to turn tail in disarray?
Follow Edward Flattau on Twitter: www.twitter.com/greenmorality
What city do you mean? New Orleans is certainly not entirely below sea level. A Tulane University study concluded that half of the inhabited area of New Orleans is above sea level.
"a devastating natural disaster in an urban locale prone to events of a similar magnitude"
Again, I must ask, "About which urban locale do you write?" The flood was caused by engineering failure; it was not a natural disaster. A prominent forensic engineer said that had the flood protection "system" (ahem) of New Orleans functioned properly, the worst New Orleans would have experienced is "wet ankles." Most of the areas flooded during Katrina had never been flooded before, making New Orleans a place not historically prone to events of a similar magnitude.
Since you are an environmental writer, I presume you are familiar with the role wetlands play in shielding New Orleans in these events, and with how the great loss of Louisiana coastal wetlands increases New Orleans' historical vulnerability. Why not advocate for restoring the wetlands rather than gushing over Ed Blakely's misunderstood and unappreciated "bravery" and unmentioned failure.
The conclusions may ultimately be the same, but starting from positions of fact and accuracy are necessary in reaching those conclusions. Please do try.
It is a shame people believe anything Blakely says.
New Orleans is not going anywhere. Residents who could afford to do so rebuilt higher to try to put their property out of the reach of the grossly negligent levee design engineers.
He should have been arrested, and perhaps will after Federal prosecutors finish with his pal Ray Nagin. I surely hope so.
Some indisputable facts:
Over 50% of New Orleans is at or above sea level.
40% of the flooding was in neighborhoods which had never flooded.
New Orleans was flooded 8/29/05 by engineering failures perpetrated by the Corps of Engineers, NOT hurricane Katrina which missed the city by 30 miles and actually devastated Mississippi.
Natural Disaster v Man-Made Disaster http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmcquaid/2012/07/05/the-blurring-line-between-natural-and-man-made-disasters/
Where would you suggest we place the nation's 3rd busiest, and #1 in tonnage Port? It's a Port, not beachfront property. This is a city older than the country.