Home  Sustainable Land Development Today March 2007
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New Orleans – On the Road to Redevelopment |
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Written by Tony Wernke
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Monday, 01 January 2007 |
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Publisher Tony Wernke provides a look at New Orleans today and a peak into the future.
More than a year after being ravished by Hurricane Katrina, the region surrounding New Orleans is still deeply engaged in picking up the pieces, and the numerous public and private stakeholders are nearing the end of a sometimes acrimonious exercise in debating the best courses of action to take in an effort to move forward.
Many have argued that New Orleans shouldn’t be redeveloped. They contend that the area was nothing but automobile-centric sprawl, wrapped by insufficient levees sinking into the peat of the backswamps. Some argue that the development patterns and the resource extraction industries that support New Orleans created, in this era of global warming, the very conditions for the natural disaster in the first place. While there may be some truth in some of those arguments, none of them accurately reflect the entire reality of the region. Further, none of them recognize that New Orleans is going to be redeveloped. The people of the region demand that it be, and, as a major port, our country demands it as well.
The challenge – and the opportunity – is for the redevelopment to ultimately be sustainable. That is, it must be done in a way that both balances and maximizes the social, ecological, and economic needs of its stakeholders. And the truth is; we all hold a stake in the sustainable redevelopment of New Orleans.
The Port of New Orleans is nothing less than the shipping gateway to and from the rest of the world for the majority of our country. It is a top commodities-handling port, and a leader in imports of numerous natural materials that comprise the products that make up our homes, office buildings, stores, places of worship, and places of recreation. The nation simply requires a solid, deep draft port at the bottom of the Mississippi River.
Further, forty percent of all seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from the area. New Orleans is also home to numerous esteemed medical research facilities and seven institutions of higher learning. New Orleans embodies today’s economic realities, as well as the promise of our future.
And beyond our country’s economic dependence on a vital New Orleans, it is a cultural icon. The city boasts more than 35,000 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. That’s a full 60% more than any other city in the country. It is one of the top culinary destinations in the world, combining African heritage, Caribbean flair, Spanish style, Cajun spice, Creole vitality, and French tradition. And, of course, New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, the only original American art form.
New Orleans is a great American city, and it is the responsibility of both the American government and the American people to help put it back on its feet after the natural disaster that ravished it. We’re spending billions to rehabilitate Baghdad and Basra, and we’re going to do the same for one of our own.
But the stakes are very high. If the people are equally as exposed to another natural disaster, then the effort will ultimately be for naught. Further, if little is done to meet the needs of all racial and class backgrounds; if socio-economic problems that have long bedeviled the city’s communities are not tackled head on; if reconstruction focuses exclusively on high-profile projects, then New Orleans will become just a neo-Creole shadow of its former self. Because, intertwined with the ecological and economic problems that all of us want to address are the neighborhoods of the very people who gave us jazz and jambalaya, and made New Orleans the gritty legend it was, and will be again.
To this point, there has been a plethora of heated rhetoric from government politicians, the planning community, the engineering community, the architectural community, social interest groups, environmental interest groups, commercial interest groups, and many others on how, when, where and why the development should or shouldn’t occur. Numerous approaches have been positioned by different groups as “the” direction for the region. To their detriment, most of them center on just one component of sustainable development, but not the other two complimentary and necessary components.
The reality will undoubtedly be that some aspects of most of the positions that have been put forth will be part of the ultimate solution, because if a solution adds to the ecological, social and financial health of not only the region, but of the country, and indeed the world, it will find widespread acceptance among the various interest groups.
As politics and policy debate transitions toward substantive redevelopment inertia, New Orleans stands under a national microscope – a real-time “clean slate” experiment in how public policy and private enterprise can and should interact to enhance the quality of life of millions of people throughout the region.
The redevelopment of New Orleans is a massive undertaking. It’s the land where serious demand meets serious opportunity. At least half the homes are thought to be still uninhabitable. Some parishes lost every school. But rebuilding the schools depends on having students ready to attend. The families need rooftops, but they also need places to buy goods and services. It’s a complex puzzle that demands creative solutions. We don’t know all of the answers, but there is at least one undeniable certainty. The development community will ultimately provide them.
The time is right for those development professionals who believe in action to get engaged and initiate meaningful action. The New Orleans region is a land of significant opportunity – but with that opportunity comes responsibility. Some of the best of our development community will embrace those opportunities.
Join us at the next Land Development Breakthroughs – Best Practices Conference, which is being located right at the heart of the debate, right in the middle of New Orleans in June. By then, New Orleans will be beginning to search for and attract the right professionals who can seize the significant opportunities and help carry the effort forward. The event will present numerous opportunities to network with the players who are seeking the right developers and industry professionals with whom to partner with in this massive undertaking – on a project by project basis. It is where rhetoric will transform into meaningful action, and you’ll want to be a part of it.
But even if you do not want to become a part of the redevelopment of the city through your development products and services, you can still be an important part of the solution. The city needs tourism and your attendance will show your support, while also learning about the industry’s best practices that you can implement into your business and development projects. Learn about how you can enhance your profitability in the “Creole Capital of the World.” Help New Orleaneans help themselves by staying at their signature hotel, eating the fine cuisine, listening to the music, and shopping in the unique galleries that surround the conference on all sides. LDT |
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