Letters From Our Readers

Disastrous Plan

January 12, 2005

To the Editor:

Yesterday’s release of the new plan for citywide redevelopment was as muchan embarrassment to the planning profession as it was an affront to working-class and low income residents who bore the brunt of Katrina’s devastation.

While returning low-lying areas of the city to wetlands— serving as park space, wildlife habitats and internal water management— is a sound and necessary policy, the proposed areas to be converted to green space bear little relation to the natural elevation of the city. They instead conform conspicuously to the geography of poverty in our city— the lower 9th Ward, Franklin Ave, Central City, New Orleans East, and Gentilly.

Perhaps more blatantly, the areas for redevelopment correspond not to the hardest-hit areas in need of immediate and through assistance, but to high-value real estate areas in Algiers, Industrial Park, Bywater and Garden District— areas slated for elite redevelopment long before Katrina hit.

Instead of providing a bold, hopeful, and equitable vision for our city, this plan— led not-so-subtlety by one of the richest landowners in the city— disgracefully attempts to reconstruct the same racist power lines and elite developer-oriented planning schemes that were plaguing our city and our people before the hurricane.

Jason Neville
New Orleans Resident