General Information

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Media

• The Philadelphia Inquirer's Architecture Critic, Inga Saffron, discusses New Orleans' identity and the importance of some of the lesser known existing architecture. While the Garden District and the French Quarter are recognized by people throughout as architecturally important neighborhoods in the city, other areas known as Bywater, the Irish Channel, or the Lower Ninth Ward, also contain important structures. She notes that this is the place, "[W]here 16-foot-wide shotgun houses are permanently dressed for an architectural Mardi Gras, and you will almost certainly be met with blank stares. Yet it is those modest neighborhoods of steamy, close-packed, wooden cottages that have long provided the aspic in which New Orleans' high-struttin' culture could jell. And, tragically, it is those neighborhoods that are now most likely to be sitting knee-deep in fetid water." These are some homes that are threatened with bulldozers and teardowns.

Get Involved

Communication Infrastructure

The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s (CNT) Wireless Community Network project has responded to the call for technical expertise in establishing communication infrastructure for first responders and evacuees in the Gulf Coast area following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. There is a “desperate need” to re-connect people with basic resources which communication systems help facilitate. An initial team of CNT network engineers is in Louisiana as a component of Part-15.org, an operation of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to provide the necessary broadband and phone services to people with no or limited access to their families and friends, emergency services, and government authorities. CNT’s Community Wireless Team will help deploy wireless networks, that will allow evacuees and first responders to email, make phone calls, post pictures of missing people, request services, and report conditions in evacuee camps that are popping up across the region, among other important tasks. The networks will be similar to those being deployed in Illinois as part of CNT’s Wireless Community Network project.

To make a donation visit Paypal -- it's fast, free and secure: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

Donations will go directly to the effort, you can see how donations are being use and what work is being done, the CNT engineers posting updates several times a day. Wired News is also reporting on the effort.

Housing

If you live within a 300 mile radius of the disaster area and would be willing to host those left homeless, visit Movon.org's site: http://www.hurricanehousing.org/

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Last edited by Johanna Nyden.   Page last modified on September 12, 2005