Sandy Sorlien Op-Ed

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9/5/05 Sandy Sorlien

RESTORE, DON'T REINVENT DAMAGED CITIES

For anyone who has spent time in New Orleans, it is difficult to imagine a future without this city so full of life. Because it is unimaginable, we indulge in dreams and speculation about restoring the city, even before the dead have been recovered or the floodwaters drained. Yet vision precedes initiative and hard work, which must come eventually.

There are three basic scenarios for New Orleans:

1. rebuild it in the same form
2. rebuild it in a new form
3. abandon it

The city has already been abandoned, out of dire necessity. Its residents must live somewhere else for an extended cleanup period. People will put down tenuous roots in other places; many will never return to the parts of New Orleans now under water.

However, complete abandonment seems unlikely. New Orleans is one of the most-loved cities in the world, especially its historic French Quarter. "Had this been some other coastal city with less to love, in all likelihood it would be entirely abandoned," says Steve Mouzon, an architect from Florida.

Nevertheless it is possible the city may one day be smaller. Says John Massengale, a New York urbanist and writer, "As we all come to understand the tragic implications of filling the wetlands around New Orleans with sprawl, it may be that we need to think of a New Orleans closer to its historic size and surrounded once again by wetland buffers."

Some see the disaster as an opportunity to clean the old away and start anew. Architect Daniel Libeskind recently offered this in the New York Times: "To work with that history... [means] to really take the roots of great culture and build upon it. And what could be more creative than jazz? It's the right theme." Said Jerold Kayden of the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the same article, "In certain parts of the city, there is a tabula rasa, which raises the question of whether there's anything left of a real memory."

The suggestion to reinvent New Orleans upon a blank slate sends chills down the spines of people who love and understand the form of traditional cities. The people of New Orleans should resist any attempts to "create" a modern theme park there. Instead, the first option, to rebuild in the same form, would be a choice true to the memories, held by residents and visitors alike, of New Orleans and her urbane historic center and vernacular neighborhoods.

It would also make the most practical sense. Says Patrick Pinnell, a Connecticut architect, "Utility lines, streets, sidewalks, and a dense net of property lines constitute a ghostly but powerful force-field context. Think how many cities have been rebuilt on such existing lines despite near erasure of buildings. Chicago, San Francisco, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all examples."

Respecting traditional urban form doesn't mean replicating it house by house; it means retaining the walkable, human-scaled block structure and mixed-use zoning that characterizes the most-loved cities the world over.

Nor does it mean that some patterns can't be improved, like that of segregation by income. "One of the concerns that has already surfaced is that this is a massive "slum clearance" opportunity, making displacement of the working poor permanent," says David Brain, a sociology professor at the New College of Florida. "Any future rebuilding efforts must be conceived in terms of the principles of mixed-income communities. Not just for the sake of all who have lost their homes, but for the sake of the very sustainability of these devastated cities and towns."

If and when it happens, the restoration of the neighborhood structure and housing of New Orleans will require a long-term cooperative effort.

Other than Libeskind and Kayden, all of the people quoted here are members of the Congress for the New Urbanism. The CNU is a non-profit collaborative of 2500 architects, urban planners, builders, engineers, developers, ecologists and others from a wide range of disciplines. The organization was founded in 1993 under a Charter of twenty-seven principles, including the following five:

  * 	The metropolis has a necessary and fragile relationship to its agrarian hinterland 	and natural landscapes. The relationship is environmental, economic, and cultural.

  * 	Development patterns should not blur or eradicate the edges of the metropolis. 	Infill development within existing areas conserves environmental resources, 	economic investment, and social fabric, while reclaiming marginal and abandoned 	areas.

 * 	The development and redevelopment of towns and cities should respect historical 	patterns, precedents, and boundaries.

  *  	Within neighborhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring 	people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening   the 	personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.

  * 	Architecture and landscape design should grow from local climate, topography, 	history, and building practice.

There is much to be done in and for New Orleans before more detailed discussion of rebuilding can begin. But when that day comes, the CNU Charter embodies the kind of thinking that should guide not only the rebuilding of New Orleans, but the building of any town.

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Last edited by Sandy Sorlien. Based on work by Steve filmanowicz and Johanna Nyden.  Page last modified on September 26, 2005