News
All Over but the Shouting
Jan 16 2007
If the purpose of the various official planning processes — Bring New Orleans Back, Urban Land Institute, the Lambert Plan, and the Unified New Orleans Plan — was to aid the recovery of our city, we can now classify this exercise as a failure. And we can continue rebuilding our neighborhoods as we have been since the federal government graciously allowed us back into our city.
The money grab is over. The cash is gone. While our politicians bickered over the rules of the game and who would take the credit, the lobbyists divvied up the spoils. It is unfortunate but in the face of a man-made disaster that nearly destroyed our city, our leaders could rise no further than to continue fighting over control of the ruins. It is time to leave our leaders behind. Let them follow if they will.
The producers of the Unified New Orleans Plan have begun to show their hand. “What you won’t see in the plan [are] directives that prioritize certain neighborhoods or districts,” says Joe Butler, a spokesperson for the planning process. He continues, “And we are not in any position to select how they are brought back and the timeline [on which] they are brought back.”
So after 18 months, New Orleans is about to receive a plan with no priorities, no timelines, and no budget.
While this may be a position popular with politicians (recall the disingenuous City Council vote to rebuild the entire city simultaneously), residents who live in the real world understand that no project of the magnitude of rebuilding a major urban area gets very far without priorities, timelines, and budgets. To suggest otherwise is to insult us on top of having wasted countless hours of our time over the past year and a half.
Now that we have been warned not to expect too much from the Unified New Orleans Plan—that dreaming of sidewalks in our neighborhoods was a bit too visionary —the invading hordes of planners can safely return to their prestigious firms and focus on writing journal articles about the lessons to be learned from our plight.
While we still believe legally structuring citizens into the planning and budgeting processes is critical for long-term recovery, it appears likely that this entire planning process was a colossal waste of time and resources. It certainly doesn’t appear likely to produce the tangible results we were encouraged to “visualize” many months back.
But, perhaps the Law of Unintended Consequences is at work here. Perhaps we did gain something from this process—just not what we were working toward.
Last Thursday, thousands of us marched in the streets of our city demanding that our leaders wake up and pay attention to the violent crime plaguing our community. People of all walks of life and from all across the city converged on City Hall in a show of unity unprecedented in a city that frowns on public protests and favors working through personal networks.
What enabled this extraordinary feat of public organizing? It is possible that a year and a half of formal and informal meetings—meetings with friends, meetings with neighbors, meetings with civic groups, politicians, and even the UNOP meetings, the Katrina Krewe, Friends of Lafitte Corridor, Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, and Levees.org —it is possible that this unprecedented expansion of social networks is in the process of creating a new and vibrant civil society in New Orleans. This new civil society includes the social aid and pleasure clubs, the mardi gras krewes, the business groups, and the neighborhood organizations but it moves beyond them and brings them into wider networks that cross boundaries in new and dynamic ways.
Unfortunately for those planners with halcyon dreams of greatness, no one got to play the role of Hausmann redesigning Paris or L’Enfant drawing the future streets of Washington on a clean piece of parchment.
But perhaps we residents of the city did gain something. Nascent. Fragile. Uncertain. And by no means inevitable. A civil society is taking its first tentative steps. If able to grow, mature, gain in strength and confidence, this development could be the single most important factor in the recovery of New Orleans.
While New Orleans has been blessed with rich culture and traditions, civil society—especially in the sense of a broad politically engaged populace—has been remarkably absent. The emergence of a vibrant civil society could go far in addressing the problems that have prevented our city from realizing its full potential.
Filed under: Editorials | Rebuilding New Orleans
Replies
David Collins said:
I am sad, glad and stronger willed by what I have just read. I was able to attend one of the first events that attempted to provide a forum for New Orleans to dream a new New Orleans. What struck me even then was the contrast between the political rhetoric and the strong, inviolate will of the people that were there, the people of the real New Orleans that wanted it back and were willing to stake everything on it.
Congratulations to you for being a civil society that has come together despite the politicians, despite the lack of funding help where it is so desperately needed, despite the leadership that should have risen to the occassion. Congratulations on making sure that the will of your group will not be detered by disappointment and lack of attention. You have stood alone far too long and I am glad to hear you are all standing together again!
Good luck, I can’t wait to get back to visit you, dine with you and play with you again. I know what it means to miss New Orleans!
Jan 18 2007
4:06 AM
Bill Reeves said:
As one of the non-participants, I can’t gloat over the failure of the planning process. I do, however, wonder about the march of 5,000. Is it a foreshadowing of a better society, or is it a foreshadowing of the mob that occupied the St. Bernard housing project? Perhaps the occupation was good, if the occupants will police themselves by eliminating the drug dealers and users; but I suspect it is all being driven by the immensely rich drug operators who want those projects for customers and protection.
Is it time to legalize drugs? this american drug culture has ruined Colombia, Northern Mexico, Afganistan, not to mention the inner parts of Detroit, New Orleans, Washington, etc.
Jan 18 2007
5:30 AM
Keith Twitchell said:
While the shortcomings of the various planning processes are legion, it does no one any good to label them a failure in this way. We have known since the beginning that the money on the table was nowhere near enough to rebuild (remember George W’s initial promise of $200 billion? Anyone seen that?). The UNOP plan is in fact a tool that the city, planning districts and individual neighborhoods can use to seek additional funding from a variety of sources. Your point about the value of engaging people in their future is a valid one, and we need to build on this to create a formal, lasting structure for citizen engagement in New Orleans; but simply dismissing the UNOP plan serves no purpose and is an insult to the citizens who have put their heart and soul into it.
Jan 18 2007
9:00 AM
Geoff Coats said:
Keith,
I’m sorry you read the critique as an insult to the people who have participated. The editorial was not about insulting the people of new orleans, but rather - we had hoped - points to their growing power in the face of incompetence, lack of leadership, and flat out dissembling by the folks who should be driving the recovery.
I hope we can agree to disagree and continue working together for the betterment of the community. I think you know I have the highest respect for you and the work you do.
Jan 18 2007
9:49 AM
Editor B said:
Bill, I believe the re-occupation of the St. Bernard is a good thing, and not driven by drug dealers at all but by residents who need affordable housing. However, the residents will need all the help they can get to prevent the twin scourges of drug abuse and violent crime from re-asserting themselves full force. Is it time to legalize drugs? Yes, it’s past time. This is a very hard argument to make in today’s political climate. But when the stakes are so high, we can’t afford to dismiss any potential solution out of hand.
Jan 18 2007
11:04 AM
Karen said:
The Planning Process has better served the Planners than it has the participants.
We know we need Levees, we did not need Millions of Dollars spent to tell us that.
Jan 22 2007
9:05 PM
David Yeargin said:
Even as much of New Orleans sat submerged, urban planners, politicians, consultants, and others with dreams of greatness or dreams of great riches began sketching what the next New Orleans would be, or if there was to be one. But once the water drained away, we saw that the roads were still there, the grass came back, and most of the houses remained standing.
The post-Katrina planning struggle is between those who want to repair and those who want to replace. The planners wanted a clean slate and a cleared lot; what they found was a dirty wound and a moldy house. They wanted to build a utopia of museums and parks in a southern Eden, while the people who actually live here just want someone to help clean their house, get the water pressure back to normal, and fix the flood walls.
Jan 23 2007
3:14 PM