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No, I'm not a city planing expert. But I have lived through a disaster -- >i>much much much smaller than a run of the mill hurricane, let alone Katrina. And I participated to a smalkl degree in the conversation after the earthquake, and I saw what happened. So I have thoughts about what cities should do when they're doing a massive rebuilding.
First, don't be in a hurry to tear down buildings that people love. FEMA in our day would only pay to do demolition in the first 30 days so a lot of buildings came down that shouldn't have -- because there wasn't time to determine whether they could be saved. This time around FEMA isn't in the position to do anything.
Second, priority on working-class amenities. This is not ideology speaking, though ideology concurs: it's sheer pragmatism. Rebuilding low-to-moderate income housing, schools, shopping districts in these neighborhoods, parks, hospitals, will employ more people than rebuilding a few hotels and cost about the same -- or less sometimes. THis is not to say don't rebuild the tourist things. Just that they are second-tier.
Third, do not listen to people who point to clean, shiny soulless downtowns and demand that you emulate that. We had people seriously suggesting that we should look like downtown Houston, and get rid of the benches and trees on our main downtown street because they encouraged loitering. We are a tourist town. Loitering is our busines. Of course what they didn't want were street people -- the poor. The intransigent poor.
Also. Make demands with teeth in them. We had everybody agree to putting low-to-moderate income housing on the second and third (and the new fourth) floors of the downtown buildings but it was years before anybody actually did that. Instead they built more and more expensive office space that stayed empty because the rent was too high and because it just so happened that there was a recession after the earthquake.
Expect a recession, but don't be cowed by it. We had a hard time getting lenders to invest in our downtown though we have a good track record (pretty low turnover, all things considered, and the city had the highest bond rating which I forget what it's called). The city ended up getting into the lending business.
Advice for lenders: don't be afraid. Do insist on sensible development following the latest in green building practices and urban planning. But don't insist on 90% occupancy before the building is started. Be the first penguin off the ice.
How should it look? There are at least five approaches. (1)Build it cheap and fast and devil the details -- tempting when a lot of people are out of places to live. Better to bring in scads of prefab temporary housing (it worked for us) and take your time. (2)Take advantage of the clean slate to build all new all the time, in the latest fashion. (3) Build as close a replica of the old stuff as posible. (4) Follow the skyline and general lines of the old stuff and give a certain amount of leeway after that. (5) a patchwork of (2) through (4). I recommend (5). Not everything old was beautiful. Not everything has to look new. A city looks best when it shows its history.
Something to remember about the tourist industry. A place becomes a tourist destination because it was first off a pleasant place to live. For the most part, designing for the residents is designign for the tourists. Especially when it comes around to transportation and amenities. If tourists can get around town on streetcars, subways and buses, which are pleasant, clean, new, safe, and run frequently and late, they will. Guess who also benefits from this?
It's also tempting when there's massive rebuilding to do to say "we can't afford to think about the environment now," but now is of course the best and only time to do it. THere's a fair amount of job creation in restoring and maintaining wild lands. Everybody knows that the wetland restoration projects that were cut were hurrican and flood protection. Everybody knows that there's been new understandings of how to live with a river. Now is the time to put those into practice.
I've been told that it will take six months to pump out the city and three more months to dry it out. Then there will be toxics to clean up, sewage to clean up, rubble to transport, and building to be done. Don't follow the Navy's lead -- don't hire Halliburton. Patchwork it with city and state employees, local and nearly-local construction industry contractors, and union workers from around the country. Create new union workers -- hire people made homeless at the normal wage and that will do more to revitalize the economy than a hundred pork barrel schemes hatched by Republican cronies.
Yeah, I'm ideological. But this is practical.
On other fronts, I have a complicated earworm I can't even identify. Maybe I'm actually composing music? I wish I wasn't music-dyslexic.
First, don't be in a hurry to tear down buildings that people love. FEMA in our day would only pay to do demolition in the first 30 days so a lot of buildings came down that shouldn't have -- because there wasn't time to determine whether they could be saved. This time around FEMA isn't in the position to do anything.
Second, priority on working-class amenities. This is not ideology speaking, though ideology concurs: it's sheer pragmatism. Rebuilding low-to-moderate income housing, schools, shopping districts in these neighborhoods, parks, hospitals, will employ more people than rebuilding a few hotels and cost about the same -- or less sometimes. THis is not to say don't rebuild the tourist things. Just that they are second-tier.
Third, do not listen to people who point to clean, shiny soulless downtowns and demand that you emulate that. We had people seriously suggesting that we should look like downtown Houston, and get rid of the benches and trees on our main downtown street because they encouraged loitering. We are a tourist town. Loitering is our busines. Of course what they didn't want were street people -- the poor. The intransigent poor.
Also. Make demands with teeth in them. We had everybody agree to putting low-to-moderate income housing on the second and third (and the new fourth) floors of the downtown buildings but it was years before anybody actually did that. Instead they built more and more expensive office space that stayed empty because the rent was too high and because it just so happened that there was a recession after the earthquake.
Expect a recession, but don't be cowed by it. We had a hard time getting lenders to invest in our downtown though we have a good track record (pretty low turnover, all things considered, and the city had the highest bond rating which I forget what it's called). The city ended up getting into the lending business.
Advice for lenders: don't be afraid. Do insist on sensible development following the latest in green building practices and urban planning. But don't insist on 90% occupancy before the building is started. Be the first penguin off the ice.
How should it look? There are at least five approaches. (1)Build it cheap and fast and devil the details -- tempting when a lot of people are out of places to live. Better to bring in scads of prefab temporary housing (it worked for us) and take your time. (2)Take advantage of the clean slate to build all new all the time, in the latest fashion. (3) Build as close a replica of the old stuff as posible. (4) Follow the skyline and general lines of the old stuff and give a certain amount of leeway after that. (5) a patchwork of (2) through (4). I recommend (5). Not everything old was beautiful. Not everything has to look new. A city looks best when it shows its history.
Something to remember about the tourist industry. A place becomes a tourist destination because it was first off a pleasant place to live. For the most part, designing for the residents is designign for the tourists. Especially when it comes around to transportation and amenities. If tourists can get around town on streetcars, subways and buses, which are pleasant, clean, new, safe, and run frequently and late, they will. Guess who also benefits from this?
It's also tempting when there's massive rebuilding to do to say "we can't afford to think about the environment now," but now is of course the best and only time to do it. THere's a fair amount of job creation in restoring and maintaining wild lands. Everybody knows that the wetland restoration projects that were cut were hurrican and flood protection. Everybody knows that there's been new understandings of how to live with a river. Now is the time to put those into practice.
I've been told that it will take six months to pump out the city and three more months to dry it out. Then there will be toxics to clean up, sewage to clean up, rubble to transport, and building to be done. Don't follow the Navy's lead -- don't hire Halliburton. Patchwork it with city and state employees, local and nearly-local construction industry contractors, and union workers from around the country. Create new union workers -- hire people made homeless at the normal wage and that will do more to revitalize the economy than a hundred pork barrel schemes hatched by Republican cronies.
Yeah, I'm ideological. But this is practical.
On other fronts, I have a complicated earworm I can't even identify. Maybe I'm actually composing music? I wish I wasn't music-dyslexic.
no subject
no subject
Um, and on the earworm thing, you probably ARE composing music. This is what Rockgod thinks I'm doing when I have an earworm. On occasion I've tried to share the earworm with him, so that maybe in his extreme genius he could circumvent the tonedeafness and compose around it, and something beautiful and rare would be born. Alas, it's never worked. My tonedeafness ALWAYS gets in the way.
no subject
But -- it should always have been a clue: the cities in the world which we all admire are pedestrian-and-public-transportation cities. Places where you can get off work, drop in at the bakery, walk your dog, get to the library -- without getting in and out of a damned car.
no subject
more thoughts on rebuilding
Years and years ago I was reading about sea level rise and the consequences of that, and the thing I kept running into was that raw sea level rise was only the beginning of the problem for coastal cities. In addition there is erosion (such as we have on the California coast with our sea-bottom marine terrace) and subsidence (such as they have on the Gulf Coast with its alluvial sediment coastlines). New Orleans is a place which has been experiencing marked subsidence for years and there's no reason to think it's going to stop. So that has to be addressed. Some of our stupider politicians are floating balloons about not rebuilding the city at all, or not paying federal money to do it. That's stupid and brutal. New Orleans is an important port, an important industrial city, and an extremely important cultural center. But. There might be merit in sacrificing some of the seaward parts of town, cultivating wetlands there, moving the port if necessary, and moving the town up and over. And there might be merit in building higher. I'm not a fan of highrises and skyscrapers, but in photos it looks like a lot of New Orleans is two-story neighborhoods, and they could go to three and four stories without losing the cozy character for which they are famous. And above-ground basements should be de rigeur in New Orleans, and strong deep foundations -- the techniques and technologies for that kind of building are known, I'm not talking science fiction here.
The South in general has tended to have excessively gentle building codes, which I think is only partly a matter of ideology -- it's also because of class issues.
That's what it comes down to, no matter who says differently.
no subject
I also like that you are thinking in a progressive, productive and forward fashion, practically, about rebuilding at a time when I'm still feeling so angry I worry that I might accidentally explode with psychic abilities, go all Carrie and murder a high-school gym full of prom goers with just the heat of my rage. Or else my hair will catch fire.