Returning and Rebuilding

One of the many highlights from my most recent stay in New Orleans (others include seeing the Mahotella Queens at Snug Harbor, and virtually every opportunity to eat) was a conversation with a friend who works in the field of housing assistance. "My phone is clogged daily with calls from evacuees," she said, referring to the people who were bussed, or choppered, to unknown destinations, where they remain to this day. They may, she continued, have landed better jobs in their new locations, better housing, and their kids may have better schools. So why is her phone clogged with their calls? "They just can't wait to come home."

It's what I suspected two years ago, when outside pundits surmised that the "betters" would lure New Orleanians to Houston, or Atlanta, or wherever. The fierce and deep bond people have to the city is the "X" factor that has to be weighed in the balance against the multiple obstacles -- continued red tape in the "Road Home" program, absent leadership in the Mayor's office, federal fecklessness, a disturbing crime situation (made worse by the performance of the recently-resigned DA, Eddie Jordan, whom the Mayor helped persuade to step down; that's one trick Ray Nagin has in his arsenal, sharing his lack of visibility with other officeholders who need it) -- to speedy recovery.

Robin Pogrebin, in Tuesday's NYT, took a look at one of the tangible faces of that recovery, the design and construction of the new vintage of houses and public buildings. Of course, there actually are new, and restored, houses going up, while the public buildings remain concepts, if not whims and fancies. But the piece, which is heavy on quotes from architects and planners, revisits once more the fantasy that post-K New Orleans was a "clean slate" that planners should have seized to write a new chapter in the history of urbanism, and that those who resist are "historicists" in sentimental thrall to a past that's not coming back.

To most of us who live in the city and love it, the clean slate theory ignores some basic truths: old houses, the ones we're in hock to maintain, were built the way they were (despite some airs and pretensions in design) because it made sense for the area and climate. Big high windows and front porches weren't only sensible for a time before air conditioning; like office-tower windows that can actually open, they make sense in times of emergency when the first thing to go out is the electricity. And houses were built using cypress because that local wood is the best adapted to the high humidity conditions of the area. That's why old houses, gutted to the studs, are still habitable. There are splendid examples -- not all that many, to be sure -- of indisputably new architecture taking its place gracefully among the old. I'd point to the "Fred and Ginger Building" by Frank Gehry, nestling comfortably amid 19th century buildings on a prominent corner in Prague. But that kind of respectful contemporary addition to a historical tapestry doesn't follow from viewing the place as an empty tablet upon which the architect and planner can be freed from all constraints of time and place. Planners already so freed in certain New Orleans areas--like "renewed" old public housing tracts -- have ignored one of the basic parts of that city's life, the street grid that makes possible corner groceries, corner bars, corner everything. Superblocks may look nice on a clean slate, but the New Orleanians who ache to return want to come back to someplace that looks, and feels, like the city they have missed for so long.

Comments

[fogbreath]

When last in NOLA,i was walking down canal before heading into the quarter for breakfast, when i came upon a group of tourists standing in front of a mcsickens; waiting for it to open.
i was tempted to admonish them for traveling to the cresent city only to wait to eat at a place they could have gone around the corner to get to where ever they lived.
then realized it would do no good and continued
quietly on my way to a very good breakfast.

[fqmorris]

The real issue of "blank slate" versus "restoration" isn't about streets or architectural styles or the virtue of those old houses. This discussion should be about WHERE in New Orleans the rebuilding/repopulation should occur. "Higher density on high ground" was the initial call of responsible planners and architects because, while the levees SHOULD have protected all the neighborhoods, they DIDN'T, and lord knows when New Orleans will be able to trust them fully again. Thus New Orleans would have been wise to have prioritized recovery efforts in some locations versus others so that, God forbid, should the levees break again, fewer people will be displaced. But no politician will tell a neighborhood that they're recovery is not a first priority, even though it makes no sense to try to provide City services to places with only a few residents, or where another levee break will wipe out our precious recovery efforts again.

[Mola]

i love harry shearer for tellin' it like it is. his piece on nola public housiing was so good i sent it the staff who drafted the legislation to save affordable housing in the Gulf Coast (and they loved it).
thank you, Harry
for all those who want to come home but haven't been able to: we're working on it.

[WigWamWag]

Harry you keep living in the past.

NOLA of old is long gone will never return in the Big Easy way that some want it to be. It was a crazy party town insanely built below sea level and based on irresponsible escapism and tourism exploitation with a huge dose of corruption, immorality, and greed.

Why do not you ever pull for the good people of Mississippi?
HARRY RESPONDS: Because I don't live there. And because nobody like you keeps writing in saying things like "Mississippi was just a crazy old cracker state insanely built on the sweat of slaves and based on the irresponsible maintenance of a Jim Crow system, with a huge dose of ignorance."

[meokie]

Dont anyone get me wrong, I am in favor or rebuilding NOLA, however, I dont see why the rebuild could not bring out the good aspects and leave the garbage behind. Surely there is a reasonable middle ground. I seem to remember that much of the historic architecture was in danger of being totally destroyed by termites way before Katrina, so a forced rebuilding does present the opportunity to preserve a National Treasure that was and is the City of New Orleans. Chicago became a better city after the fire and San Francisco became a better city after the earthquakes. I look forward to saying the same about New Orleans. Keep it up Harry, your city needs you.
HARRY RESPONDS: Re: termites: the Formosan termite, brought to New Orleans because of its port status from you-know-where, is virtually omnivorous, and took particular delight in the historic neighborhood of the French Quarter. The city, with, I believe, some federal assistance, embarked some years ago on a quite vigorous and, so far, effective program of embedding poison traps in the sidewalks of the Quarter.

[ljsfolly]

Bush promised to rebuild but then he has put all the money and some from foreign countries borrowed to cover our debt for Iraq in the wars. To hell with this country is all he has said and his lying hand on a bible swearing to protect the constituion what more does bush have to do to say he hates us and our country.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think that a lot of things were kind of let
go to hell in New Orleans long before the
hurricane and the levee breach happened,
and after it happened, bureaucracy and
incompetence finished it off. The rest is
history, as they say, and it's a warning to
the future to ensure that ANYTHING that gets
rebuilt first only gets built after the levees
have indeed been certified to have a much
higher level of protection than what's
probably still there, the dutch have been
battling back the ocean for ages, their
assistance should be requested for design
reference purposes, and then, and then,
any home that goes back in should have
flood protection, if nothing else then they
can consider construction on piers that
will give 10-20ft of elevation above any
flood water level possible. Alternatively
if the neo-geo-ecowizards deterimine that
Mother Nature is out to convert New Orleans
into New Venice, then people should strongly
consider houseboats. Water rises, house floats
away, you start the motor, and head for the
pier. Keep provisions just like you were going
to go for 2 weeks on the water, and apply
common sense and lessons learned. You could
probably build a houseboat for less than 80k
complete with a queen-size bed, definitely
keep the rain and the mildew out, and it'd
look cool.

[meandmagoo]

Harry,I've yet to meet one single person displaced from New Orleans who "aches" to return.Ever.They've each and every one tell me that their lives are much better than they ever were in the squalid,roach infested slums of New Orleans,where nobody had a job,where everyone,from the beat cop to the mayor,are on the take,and all require payment of one sort or another to render any kind of aid.

Everybody I've met tell me Katrina is the best thing to happen to them,all things considered.

But it's probably a completely different world you inhabit than the majority of New Orleans residents did.I don't think you ever lived on welfare because there were simply no jobs.

So,spread your BS,Harry.The poor of New Orleans aren't coming back to that misery.
HARRY ASKS: So whom should I believe? My friend who works daily in the world of housing assistance, or you, who won't even bother to quantify how many "single person(s)" you've met. :"Each and every" adds up to....?

[kevin2323]

I fear that those who look at New Orleans as a "blank slate" are the disaster capitalists who are only hungry for new frontiers to pillage. I hope that human considerations are entering the fray somewhere along the line, but I'm not hopeful.

What's that saying about how when all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail? When all you've got are disaster capitalists waiting for the next landgrab, everything looks like a blank slate.
HARRY RESPONDS: To be fair, some of the "blank slate" crowd are not developers at all, but rather urban planners and architects who speak out of desire for the large canvas rather than out of more rapine motivations.

[Steve]

Mr Shearer says: "And houses were built using cypress because that local wood is the best adapted to the high humidity conditions of the area."

Of course, those cypress trees were "harvested" from the very forests which should have been part of the ecosystem protecting New Orleans from hurricanes.

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-22/118128311767740.xml&coll=1

Nothing is ever without consequences.
HARRY RESPONDS: People were building homes with cypress trees for a couple of hundred years without depleting the cypress forests dramatically. Harvesting those trees for commercial mulch is another matter entirely.

[caribconsult]

Yeah, you right, Harry. I heard of a comment by John Vidacovich, a well-respected jazz drummer from NOLA, and it was something along the lines of "They may rebuild NOLA, but it will never be the peculiar place it used to be."

Without the corner markets, like Terranova's on Explanade, or the corner bars, like Liuzza's by the Fairgrounds, NOLA just won't be NOLA.

Shame on Bush and his whole fratboy administration.

[DaveMacaray]

That was a good posting. Heavy on information and light on opinion, which is nice.
I've never been to New Orleans but keep hearing how goddamn good the food is there. I'm not arguing, but how good can it be to get all these raves? Is it better than the Olive Garden (which I think is pretty good . . . free salad, free bread)?
HARRY RESPONDS: Well, gee, no, not better than the Olive Garden, now that you mention it. But, hell, nothing's better than the Olive Garden, is it?

[Indiana]

Bravo for another excellent post! No wonder so many evacuees want to come back in spite of the obstacles--what other place is like NOLA?

[Stuart]

Read the final paragraphs of that story...talk about yer buried ledes:

"Still, Dr. Blakely said, it is important to press on with rebuilding wherever possible, whatever the architectural result."

Really?

"Whatever the architectural result"?

I just spent a weekend putting 1600 miles on the car to attend a wedding in Virginia. Plenty of "whatever" could be had at any exit you choose.

I'm glad Dr. Blakely's cranes are still blue-sky concepts and not reality.

[estabon32]

Dear Harry,

I grew up in Vinegar Bend, MS (Part of the Greater Picayune Metropolitan District!)about 36 miles from N.O. I really appreciate you keeping folks up to date on the 'progress' in N.O. I still get to the city whenever I can (I'm now living near Jackson, MS) and it is sad to see how little has changed. I make it down about every six months and the pace seems like a snail who has just downed three Hand Grenades! Let's hope we can avoid a spate of McMansions and frew-frew architecture. I can't help but believe if it was Oakland, Peoria, Tulsa, etc. that had suffered such a disaster so little would have beeen done after 2+ years!
Have a beer for me at Checkpoint Charlie's and share a chorus of 'Old Joe's Place'!