Turf Wars in the Delta
Plotting a future for the new New Orleans isn't just about urban design. Try money--and politics
The slow pace of installing trailers--of the almost 20,000 ordered for New Orleans, fewer than 3,000 were occupied as of late January--has also impeded the return of residents. The lack of White House support for construction of levees able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane (Page 74) is also slowing the city's comeback. "If you want people to return," says Jay Lapeyre, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, "we have to know we're protected from a Cat 5, at least eventually."
"I'll be home." The hope of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission was that its plan would jump-start the recovery process by providing a rational road map for rebuilding. The plan's first priority is to focus the recovery effort on portions of the city that suffered little or no flooding. Specific pockets of high ground--portions of downtown, New Orleans East, and the Lower Ninth Ward--are targeted for high-density development of both homes and businesses.
Throughout New Orleans, residents would plan their neighborhoods with the assistance of a professional team; neighborhoods with few people left might be consolidated, while low-lying, more flood-prone regions could be converted to green space if planners can persuade homeowners to seek higher ground. The commission's plan gives neighborhoods just four months to prove residents are returning; otherwise, those neighborhoods run the risk of being left out of the city's planned redevelopment. The deadline has sparked outrage and ignited a race against the clock in the black community to get residents to return. While networks of friends and families are reaching out across the country, grass-roots rebuilding efforts are springing up in black neighborhoods, encouraged by a majority-black City Council, which has repeatedly argued that the whole city should be redeveloped. "The footprint of the city has become a civil rights issue," says Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans. "The city was racially polarized before the storm, so these huge decisions are certain to tap race concerns."
Headquartered in a ramshackle office in the Eighth Ward, the New Orleans branch of the community group ACORNis gutting up to 200 homes a day in poor parts of the city--homes they hope can be rebuilt. One of those belonged to 73-year-old Edna Alexander Berkley, who had to chisel through the attic of her home after the 17th Street levee collapsed. She has since relied on ACORN to gut her home and help guide her through the beginnings of the rebuilding process--like getting a permit from the city to rebuild. Now staying with her son, Berkley makes a simple vow: "I'll be home soon."ACORN's head man here, Stephen Bradberry, argues that the commission's plan pushes out African-Americans. "[Tourists] come because of the flavor of the people," Bradberry says. "New Orleans without black people will be Disney World on the river."
By the time the commission's plan is formally accepted by the statewide Louisiana Recovery Authority in coming weeks, as is expected, controlling the upstart construction could prove an all but impossible task. Officials fear a "jack o'lantern effect"--a patchwork of occupied and blighted homes across wide swaths of the city. City services could be scarce in some of these neighborhoods, while other partially rebuilt neighborhoods may be sitting on flood-prone land, like areas of New Orleans East near Lake Pontchartrain, that the city covets as green space.
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