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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.