Stefanos Polyzoides Letter

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As urbanists and environmentalists, we must help conceptualize the entire process of reconstruction and have the courage to communicate it to the Reconstruction Authority in charge of executing the rebuilding of New Orleans. We are useless without broad public and private political support. We will succeed only if we enable the actions of the Reconstruction Authority and operate under its aura.

The national political and economic repercussions of the rebuilding of New Orleans are so vast, that those in charge of it will be compelled to carry it out under a very controlled process. This is no greenfield charrette on 300 acres. This is not a project to argue the merits of the Smart Code on. In fact, this will not be a project at all. it will rather be a Marshall Plan for transforming a whole region of our country.

The questions we should be asking right now should be those a general would be posing before doing battle, that is, tactical and strategic propositions.

• Who is in charge of reconstruction and what is their chain of command?
• What are the issues of reconstruction from most to least urgent?
• How is the City to be secured?
• How may a similar calamity be avoided in the near future?
• How is the place to be made disease free?
• How will the infrastructure be re activated?
• How will dozens of institutions be revived?
• How will people be employed and the economy revived ?
• What should be demolished and what should not?
• What will the pace of rebuilding be, and what will the relative balance be between corporate and small business interests?
• And of course, the biggest question of all, how will $100 to 150 billion be distributed over the next ten to twenty years without graft and pork, to make the city livable again? (500,000 households times $300,000)

When it comes to physical design, our greatest lever should eventually be in arguing that neighborhoods be the seed of all physical reconstruction. Not only because of what we know about them as new urbanists, but also because they are the best means of building in a manner that allows families to depend on each other during trying times. Neighborhoods are the best place to incrementally heal a broken society. I know firsthand, because I grew up in a country experiencing the Long Emergency.

Neighborhoods can also become a familiar and comprehensible slogan that extends across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. Architecture may come to New Orleans later.

Those of you living near the Gulf need to find a way to use your contacts to frame the thoughts and actions of the nascent Reconstruction Authority (those Municipal, State and Local officials, and the business community) that will be deciding the fate of New Orleans.

Stefanos Polyzoides

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Last edited by Johanna Nyden.   Page last modified on September 09, 2005