I'm feeling a great sense of hopelessness right now, as in, I'm a thousand miles away from New Orleans and the only thing I know how to do is donate to the Red Cross.
Surely there is more we can do to help, especially as the greater design community. We are facing the complete devastation of one of our nation's historic cities on a scale akin to that of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Please help me brainstorm, let's make a list. What can we do that will contribute to the rebuilding effort in a constructive way? For instance, what if we organize a "build week" or something where a bunch of us go down in a few months and start pounding some nails?
Not to totally change the intent of your question-
But what is anyone doing about educating on the idea of NOT rebuilding in a location that is fighting an uphill battle against nature already?
As well all know too well in or business, water can be the most devastating force to act on our buildings, floods or a slow roof leak and molds. The city was built tempting fate that way it's been setup.
Are there any forward-thinking groups who will be studying the idea of moving the whole city to higher ground? Then there is no cost of re-levying the crazy lake. Nature's water level will win every time.
Anyone who designs/rebuilds in the same location is, in my eyes, not doing the client justice and is bordering on negligence. It happened once, it can happen again.
Form64 - remember that the city fair the storm pretty well and it wasn't until the leeves broke that the real problems began. The Mississippi coast took a much worse direct hit from the storm. Should we not rebuild this area either?
yeah, not rebuilding here would be like saying we should abandon the entire hurricane-vulnerable east coast, including the gulf shores, the carolina low country, etc.
it just happens that the direct hit that n.o. has been dreading for a century finally came. not the first time. but the city has been there for 400+ years...
...and the san andreas fault area of ca, and the fire-prone hills of ca, and the hurricane alleys in the midwest, and the flood-prone areas along the mississippi, ohio, etc in the midwest. natural disaster happens.
Well, the issue of "not rebuilding in a blatant flood zone" is certainly a discussion that is worth having and I'm suggesting that, as people who are in a good position to have opinions on this matter, we should voice them.
Basically I'm thinking that we are idea-people.....so as idea-people let's come up with some ideas for rebuilding New Orleans in a less hazardous way.
On the same subject of priveleging...I think I heard the mayor of Biloxi (spelling of course??) say that this was "OUR TSUNAMI". I thought that was a bit insensitive considering the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Also the Governor of Mississipi/Alabama (or one of those states) compared the scene of his devestated state to Hiroshima...
And I'm not saying anything should be taken away from the signifacance of this event, just that maybe these are things that we shouldn't compare to. We should all find a way to help. I'm going to donate.
i agree, mwad. i don't want to get into the all-too simplistic mode of making comparisons. but yeah, i felt that was a little insensitive. and comparing it to hiroshima/nagasaki is totally out of line. i get very uncomfortable when generalities are made without taking in consideration context. but i suppose i was doing that with darfur. natural disaster vs. political uprise/genocide. very different, but i feel as though darfur is very much swept under the rug when it should be recognized as much as new orleans, etc.
It might help to establish some basic building codes. There are many areas that got hit where there are none. NOLA needs a much better dike system. The Army Core dropped the ball on this one. I agree with WonderK, architects can have a tremendous impact on the rebuild, but why do you all have to wait for Cameron to initiate things?
I was thinking that it might be helpful, and this is very specific but this is where my thoughts were going, if we could possibly start to compile a details library. Something very graphic and straight forward, easy to understand but technically very helpful for people, especially when the actual rebuilding process starts. Many of us cannot physically be there to help with this process but if there was one way to contribute, I feel like this could be it.
Except then I start to worry about proprietary issues and that.....I don't know, I'm just thinking that there aren't going to be enough knowledgable people available when it comes time to start directing construction on new homes. If there was a way that we could facilitate this for homeowners, not only that but provide sensible building methods and techniques so that it was done properly the first time, then we could be really useful.
"But what is anyone doing about educating on the idea of NOT rebuilding in a location that is fighting an uphill battle against nature already?
Anyone who designs/rebuilds in the same location is, in my eyes, not doing the client justice and is bordering on negligence. It happened once, it can happen again."
"the issue of "not rebuilding in a blatant flood zone" is certainly a discussion that is worth having."
****
I'm with WonderK and form64 in this line of thinking.
Yes, it's reported that the "experts" are already thinking in terms of re-building stronger levees and stronger buildings to withstand this kind of hurricane the next time around. But what about letting the river do its thing, taking the fact that flooding will happen into consideration, and building around these conditions of the site (while, yes, trying to be as hurricane resistant as possible)? OK, easy to say that. But as long as the builders force against the given conditions, they will persistently have to expend so much effort and money to fight it and maintain the infrastructure. When, quite possibly, another solution would be more successful and long-lasting.
I'm in India with the dalit fishing community working on tsunami stuff but the AFH team in Bozeman are on the case. They have been working flat out since Katrina struck communicating with local, regional and national groups inc. AIAS, AIA and HFH.
The site will be updated tomorrow on what we are doing. I'm flying to Sri Lanka the afternoon but will check in with the team when I land.
Will be in Hong Kong from the 11th-14th and then will fly into the region (Tennessee/Miss.) from the 15th-20th. If you want to get involved email [email protected] - for starters we need help mobilizing the local architectural schools in a coordinated effort. from my experience with the tsunami nothing worse than roaming bands of designers trying to 'find projects'.
We have been surprised by the lack of response compared to previous disasters but perhaps it is too early.
water is a very dynamic and powerful force. rivers move and shorelines do change. i have always been amazed by the audacity of cartographers to draw solid lines depicting shores in swampy/wetland areas on maps.
um...i may be wrong, but my understanding is that it wasn't the much feared changing path of the mississippi that did the damage in n.o. instead, the late-breaking flooding due to the levee break was from the lake side. and a direct hit from katrina would have been similarly devastating in other major metropolitan cities. shall we move them all inland? dc, baltimore, ny, boston?
as i said above, there is no more reason to 'let it go' than there is to abandon central florida, the carolina coast, or any of our coastal cities.
yes, new construction needs to be smarter. but since new construction now has a 30+/- year lifespan and a good percentage of n.o. has been there for centuries, i don't think it did so bad.
we can't act as if this situation was really avoidable. disaster can happen anywhere.
Well now, I'm not necessarily saying "let it go", I'm saying that we should have a national discussion about why this happened and what should be done to avoid it in the future.
As not per said, much of NO has been there for centuries and we should preserve what we can, but create a smarter community around it.
Humans have been defying nature for years....it's easy to look at this like, "nature has come back to reclaim the land, leave it be" but humans always have and always will live by water. It's instinct. Without trying to be insensitive I think that this is an opportunity for us to say, "OK, here is why this happened, let's not do that again, this is how we do it right".....especially when we can so easily communicate with people from all over the world. We don't have an excuse to not contribute.
actually, i'd suggest moving the displace residents to detroit. given the way the it has shrunk over the past 50 years it could probably handle an influx of 500,000 people (and just in time for the super bowl too! maybe the world really is coming to detroit). the infrastructure is already in place. well it would need some rebuilding but at least it is dry. moreover, bringing the big easy to motown it would make for an interesting cultural dynamic...maybe we could call it the big deesy. or would it be the big D'sy? or big deisy? or big DZ?
and although i agree that this storm could have put a whipping on any city, i can't help but think that trying to keep new orleans dry while it continues to sit below sea level is an uphill battle. at best it is a very expensive proposition and at worst it simply does work (similar to trying to establish a city on the moon in my opinion). it is probably too early to tell for certain, but it should be considered that this is onle of those cataclysmic natural events that literally reshapes the landscape and may be part of a larger trend in shifting ocean geography that we simply will not be able to push back against.
WonderK,
I agree with you again. As architects, we should be optimistic about rebuilding NOLA and Mississippi. Building below sea level can be done successfully. Just look at Denmark. Mulitple layers of defense against catastrophic flooding. We also need to work listen to some of the environmentalist. I just hope that reclaiming the area wont get mired down in political bullshit like NYC.
to truly believe that we shouldn't reoccupy new orleans, you would also have to argue that the entirety of holland should be vacated and returned to the sea.
If there is one thing I'd like to see come out of this, it's a reassessment of the philosophy of the Corps. I fully understand that a Cat. 4 hurricane would have devastated any city, but the problems that NO faces now are as much the fault of the Corps' pigheaded methods as Katrina. The extensive system of levees and dikes have allowed people to build in insafe (read: sub-sea level) areas, develop land in former wetland buffer areas, exponentially accelerated the Mississippi River and made the eventual breaches catastrophic. We should have had this discussion after the 1993 Mississippi River floods, but the Corps characterized that as a 500-year event and viewed it as an anomoly.
The NO cleanup is going to cost $25b. That alone seems to call for a national discussion on how and where we build.
Ironically, judging from the NYT.com aerial photos, the driest parts of NO are next to the Mississippi River levees.
well, chaglang, it depends on how you look at it. people were already there before the current levee system--well before the corp. of engineers. the levees were built to protect them. are you suggesting the us gov't not protect people that live in areas of danger or not allow them to live there? in the opinion of experts katrina is a 500 year event. so was the '93 flood--two separate events.
as not per has said before, no one is going to dismantle san francisco, l.a., and other towns along major fault lines in CA when those places are far more frequently in peril than N.O.--and their 500 year event is still pending.
so next year when the Big One hits san fran., the I-Told-You-So's will be out in full force. but where are they now?
it's natural to overreact to an extraordinary event, but common sense should be seeping back in soon.
we could tell "Georgy W" that global warming has something to do with these dissasters and the Kyoto agreement he did not want to sign FOR THE GOOD of his people.....well there it is, the gas guzzlerSUVs have a bad side don't'em
but, from all data and studies, it has no link to the increased hurricane activity of the past few years (which, by the way is predicted to last for at least another decade).
there are much better and more accurate arguments against human's disregard for the environment than hurricanes--it only confuses the issue with misinformation.
We seem to be having a lot of 500 year events, which makes me think that this is an overused bit of hyperbole. Certainly Katrina was not a 500 year hurricane - she wasn't even Category 5 when she made land. Then there is the question of whether the amount of development along the MR and in NO are exacerbating small events into catastrophic ones.
True, there were people living there, behind levees, before the Corps. But in the 1930's, the purpose of the levees went from defensive to offensive, meaning that the government was no longer using them to protect the populace, they were intent on controlling the natural environment. IMHO, this is a major shift in philosophy and the root of our present troubles.
People may live wherever they want, but I seriously question the wisdom of living below sea level, next to the ocean. And I question the wisdom of a government policy that allows/promotes this. That's where LA and SF are different - out there isn't a federally funded infrastructure placing people in more danger than they would ordinarily be.
It seems to me that the problems of building in a below-sea-level area or on land that is prone to flooding are a lot more managable than building anywhere close to a fault line. The engineering and materials exist but no one is willing to pay for them, or they can't. As norm mentioned on the other thread, much of this was forseen but, alas, Shrub cut funding for protecting the area when he needed money for his war.
But I don't want to distract from the issues at hand. Better to dwell on how to help rather than deal in hindsight.
on 500 yr. events:
no one is calling katrina a 500 year hurricane (and if they are, they shouldn't be). key word: "event", which is all inclusive--the flooding, destruction, loss of lives, etc. it's based on probablilities and, of course, not an actual 500 year timeframe.
on levees:
protecting the populace = controlling the natural environment. always has--there's no change in philosophy. they only began to do it better.
on living locations:
no one is "placing" the people of new orleans below sea level. they've placed themselves. the levee system simply protects them. they were there before the levees. and the real difference between NO and SF is that there are protections against flooding--none for earthquakes.
in one statement you say "people may live wherever they want" yet go on to say that the fed. gov't is to blame for allowing them to do so. which is it? you cannot stradle this issue.
regarding holland, i believe that approximately 40% of the country is land that has been reclaimed from the sea, not the entire country. secondly, most of the reclaimed land has been used for agricultural purposes, none of holland's major traditional cities are located there. moreover, the dutch have spent hundreds of years working on this project while new orleans has ostensibly been nothing more than a patchwork job from the start.
i'm not an expert on these things, i just feel that it may not be worth re-occupying an abandoned and soggy metro that continues to be a liability. from experience, i can say that an inch of water in a basement...excuse me, the garden level, can be enough to make for an unpleasant habitation experience. our office flooded once and years later it still smells. by comparison, many of these new orleans buildings are sitting 3-9 feet of water and will continue to do so for days if not weeks. all the infrastructural services (water, electricity, sewage, the all-important levees) are a complete mess. add the destruction of the looters into the mix and its immediate future seems pretty grim.
and i'm only half kidding about bringing people to detroit. as i said, it has the infrastructure, but could use more meat on its bones, i.e., people. with the mayoral re-election coming up, maybe hizzoner kwame should offer to pick up refugees in his wife's comfy navigator in exchange for votes. plus, i'd love to see an infusion of new orleans culture especially music into the detroit scene. even 5-10,000 refugees could be a huge shot in the arm. cajun and creole meets motown and techno.
There's a difference between putting up a levee to protect your crops from a flood and putting up a levee to redirect a body of water on a daily basis. It's the difference between a fence around your yard and a retaining wall.
All I'm saying is that the Corps is promoting an untenable situation. It's not as simple as "protection". Take a look at "Control of Nature" by John McPhee, or "Rising Tide" by... (can't remember his name). They provide good history and background on the Corps and the NO area.
I don't think we need to discuss if we should rebuild NOLA. Do you all really think that once they clean it up the population will return to the city? The tourism business alone will be dead for years. People won't have anything to return to. No jobs, no homes, nothing. Those people being bussed to Texas just became permanent residents there, not a doubt in my mind. If NOLA was a city of 1.3 million, I'd guess it will never see that population in several generations.
Also, we need to preserve more of our wetlands to absorb an influx of h2o like this. I dont really know too much about water management, but I wonder what would have happened if all of the paved surfaces in these areas were permeable, and ablbe to let water pass thru into the earth??
A, I really think you under estimate the power of place and people. This is not the first disaster natural or man made. People always rebuild. Mexico, California, Indonesia, India, Hirosima, the list goes on and on. Of course it will take time. The biggest delay will be from the politicans.
I don't underestimate anything...this just in from CNN.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Thousands of people forced from their homes by Hurricane Katrina have crammed into the New Orleans convention center, where they've had no food, no water and no word on when help would come.
And people are dying.
CNN's Chris Lawrence described "many, many" bodies, inside and outside the facility on New Orleans' Riverwalk. (Watch report on the desperate conditions at the convention center -- 2:54 )
"There are multiple people dying at the convention center," he said. "There was an old woman, dead in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over her, pushed up against a wall. Horrible, horrible conditions.
"We saw a man who went into a seizure, literally dying right in front of us."
People were "being forced to lived like animals," Lawrence said -- surrounded by piles of trash and feces.
He said while he has seen police SWAT teams drive by in armored vehicles, no one has stopped to talk with the refugees.
"People are asking, 'Where are the buses? Where is the plan? Where is the help?" he said.
I'm glad I'm not the Mayor, because he is going to have to tell the citizens of his city that THERE IS NO PLAN.
what you say about poplulation, A, may be true--i tend to agree with you. but what bothers me is the negativity and defeatist attitude of "oh well, maybe they shouldn't be there to begin with--they certainly shouldn't go back."
this is a problem and an opportunity no on in the past 5 or 6 generations has had a chance to deal with--not since the last of the great city fires (baltimore) has an american city had the need to rebuild this extensively. rather than architects placing blame and promoting abandonment of a cultural center (culture has much to with Place, by the way), we should recognize that people will return and that we can and should be involved in place-making decisions.
whether or not it's dangerous for them to live there, they have the right--please, is anyone ready to say that the government should have the ability to relocate large populations of people based on the possibility of natural disaster? i'll take all the benefits of a city like new orleans and all the cultural contributions it has made to this country and bear the risk of devastation (once, so far, in its history).
wonderk is right. we can contribute to what's next.
thanks st. for pointing out that a number of dutch cities are, in fact, below sea level. i stand corrected, or at least better informed. even so, in my opinion new orleans is a wash...unless we can get some dutch engineers to migrate there.
arguments against rebuilding n.o. miss the point completely. there's nothing to argue. if you had ever lived there, that option would be unimaginable. so, an academic discussion about should we/shouldn't we is fine, but irrelevant. there is no place like new orleans, and new orleans will be back - as glorious and decadent and funky and beautiful as ever.
"do you know what it means to miss new orleans
and miss her each night and day
i know i’m not wrong because the feeling’s
getting stronger the longer i stay away..."
to those thinking it is a bad idea to rebuild because we were tempting nature, consider the fact that New Orleans has not always been below sea level.
Levees were created back to prevent the Mississippi from flooding the city which at the times was at sea level. Also the river and its tributaries have been altered over time for shipping channels.
So what happens is that the levees which were created to protect the city were preventing sediment flowing down from the river to build up and support the land. SO with no sediment coming into the river basin, the land (the river basin) continually sank into the ground.
SO its not somuch the city had been built below sea level as it was the fact that the city was/is sinking into the ground.
I believe as recent as the mid 80s most of the downtown area was at sea level, of course today it is considerably lower.
... protective barrier islands are disappearing due to lack of sedimentation, the steadily sinking new orleans now sits at an average of 8 ft. below sea level, plus worldwide ocean levels have gotten larger and climate patterns have gotten increasingly unpredictable..
so it's not as simple as 'they knew what was coming to them'
Katrina - what can we do?
I'm feeling a great sense of hopelessness right now, as in, I'm a thousand miles away from New Orleans and the only thing I know how to do is donate to the Red Cross.
Surely there is more we can do to help, especially as the greater design community. We are facing the complete devastation of one of our nation's historic cities on a scale akin to that of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Please help me brainstorm, let's make a list. What can we do that will contribute to the rebuilding effort in a constructive way? For instance, what if we organize a "build week" or something where a bunch of us go down in a few months and start pounding some nails?
Anybody? I'm just so distraught....
Cameron, you have anything in the works?
Yes, I was hoping Cameron would jump in on this. He has a way of doing that, you know, actual non-profit organization and all.
architecture for humanity ison the case.
Not to totally change the intent of your question-
But what is anyone doing about educating on the idea of NOT rebuilding in a location that is fighting an uphill battle against nature already?
As well all know too well in or business, water can be the most devastating force to act on our buildings, floods or a slow roof leak and molds. The city was built tempting fate that way it's been setup.
Are there any forward-thinking groups who will be studying the idea of moving the whole city to higher ground? Then there is no cost of re-levying the crazy lake. Nature's water level will win every time.
Anyone who designs/rebuilds in the same location is, in my eyes, not doing the client justice and is bordering on negligence. It happened once, it can happen again.
Form64 - remember that the city fair the storm pretty well and it wasn't until the leeves broke that the real problems began. The Mississippi coast took a much worse direct hit from the storm. Should we not rebuild this area either?
Jm
yeah, not rebuilding here would be like saying we should abandon the entire hurricane-vulnerable east coast, including the gulf shores, the carolina low country, etc.
it just happens that the direct hit that n.o. has been dreading for a century finally came. not the first time. but the city has been there for 400+ years...
...and the san andreas fault area of ca, and the fire-prone hills of ca, and the hurricane alleys in the midwest, and the flood-prone areas along the mississippi, ohio, etc in the midwest. natural disaster happens.
Well, the issue of "not rebuilding in a blatant flood zone" is certainly a discussion that is worth having and I'm suggesting that, as people who are in a good position to have opinions on this matter, we should voice them.
Basically I'm thinking that we are idea-people.....so as idea-people let's come up with some ideas for rebuilding New Orleans in a less hazardous way.
this is quick and easy, but what can we do about darfur??
not privileging one tragic incident over another, of course. just a consideration.
On the same subject of priveleging...I think I heard the mayor of Biloxi (spelling of course??) say that this was "OUR TSUNAMI". I thought that was a bit insensitive considering the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Also the Governor of Mississipi/Alabama (or one of those states) compared the scene of his devestated state to Hiroshima...
And I'm not saying anything should be taken away from the signifacance of this event, just that maybe these are things that we shouldn't compare to. We should all find a way to help. I'm going to donate.
i agree, mwad. i don't want to get into the all-too simplistic mode of making comparisons. but yeah, i felt that was a little insensitive. and comparing it to hiroshima/nagasaki is totally out of line. i get very uncomfortable when generalities are made without taking in consideration context. but i suppose i was doing that with darfur. natural disaster vs. political uprise/genocide. very different, but i feel as though darfur is very much swept under the rug when it should be recognized as much as new orleans, etc.
we can start building structures in these areas out of concrete...like they do in the Virgin Islands, Bahamas, etc.
It might help to establish some basic building codes. There are many areas that got hit where there are none. NOLA needs a much better dike system. The Army Core dropped the ball on this one. I agree with WonderK, architects can have a tremendous impact on the rebuild, but why do you all have to wait for Cameron to initiate things?
Well that's kinda why I started the thread.
I was thinking that it might be helpful, and this is very specific but this is where my thoughts were going, if we could possibly start to compile a details library. Something very graphic and straight forward, easy to understand but technically very helpful for people, especially when the actual rebuilding process starts. Many of us cannot physically be there to help with this process but if there was one way to contribute, I feel like this could be it.
Except then I start to worry about proprietary issues and that.....I don't know, I'm just thinking that there aren't going to be enough knowledgable people available when it comes time to start directing construction on new homes. If there was a way that we could facilitate this for homeowners, not only that but provide sensible building methods and techniques so that it was done properly the first time, then we could be really useful.
Basically what mdler said but a lot wordier.
"But what is anyone doing about educating on the idea of NOT rebuilding in a location that is fighting an uphill battle against nature already?
Anyone who designs/rebuilds in the same location is, in my eyes, not doing the client justice and is bordering on negligence. It happened once, it can happen again."
"the issue of "not rebuilding in a blatant flood zone" is certainly a discussion that is worth having."
****
I'm with WonderK and form64 in this line of thinking.
Yes, it's reported that the "experts" are already thinking in terms of re-building stronger levees and stronger buildings to withstand this kind of hurricane the next time around. But what about letting the river do its thing, taking the fact that flooding will happen into consideration, and building around these conditions of the site (while, yes, trying to be as hurricane resistant as possible)? OK, easy to say that. But as long as the builders force against the given conditions, they will persistently have to expend so much effort and money to fight it and maintain the infrastructure. When, quite possibly, another solution would be more successful and long-lasting.
I'm in India with the dalit fishing community working on tsunami stuff but the AFH team in Bozeman are on the case. They have been working flat out since Katrina struck communicating with local, regional and national groups inc. AIAS, AIA and HFH.
The site will be updated tomorrow on what we are doing. I'm flying to Sri Lanka the afternoon but will check in with the team when I land.
Will be in Hong Kong from the 11th-14th and then will fly into the region (Tennessee/Miss.) from the 15th-20th. If you want to get involved email [email protected] - for starters we need help mobilizing the local architectural schools in a coordinated effort. from my experience with the tsunami nothing worse than roaming bands of designers trying to 'find projects'.
We have been surprised by the lack of response compared to previous disasters but perhaps it is too early.
i agree with from64 and wonderk on this one
water is a very dynamic and powerful force. rivers move and shorelines do change. i have always been amazed by the audacity of cartographers to draw solid lines depicting shores in swampy/wetland areas on maps.
new orleans was great...but let it go.
um...i may be wrong, but my understanding is that it wasn't the much feared changing path of the mississippi that did the damage in n.o. instead, the late-breaking flooding due to the levee break was from the lake side. and a direct hit from katrina would have been similarly devastating in other major metropolitan cities. shall we move them all inland? dc, baltimore, ny, boston?
as i said above, there is no more reason to 'let it go' than there is to abandon central florida, the carolina coast, or any of our coastal cities.
yes, new construction needs to be smarter. but since new construction now has a 30+/- year lifespan and a good percentage of n.o. has been there for centuries, i don't think it did so bad.
we can't act as if this situation was really avoidable. disaster can happen anywhere.
Well now, I'm not necessarily saying "let it go", I'm saying that we should have a national discussion about why this happened and what should be done to avoid it in the future.
As not per said, much of NO has been there for centuries and we should preserve what we can, but create a smarter community around it.
Humans have been defying nature for years....it's easy to look at this like, "nature has come back to reclaim the land, leave it be" but humans always have and always will live by water. It's instinct. Without trying to be insensitive I think that this is an opportunity for us to say, "OK, here is why this happened, let's not do that again, this is how we do it right".....especially when we can so easily communicate with people from all over the world. We don't have an excuse to not contribute.
actually, i'd suggest moving the displace residents to detroit. given the way the it has shrunk over the past 50 years it could probably handle an influx of 500,000 people (and just in time for the super bowl too! maybe the world really is coming to detroit). the infrastructure is already in place. well it would need some rebuilding but at least it is dry. moreover, bringing the big easy to motown it would make for an interesting cultural dynamic...maybe we could call it the big deesy. or would it be the big D'sy? or big deisy? or big DZ?
and although i agree that this storm could have put a whipping on any city, i can't help but think that trying to keep new orleans dry while it continues to sit below sea level is an uphill battle. at best it is a very expensive proposition and at worst it simply does work (similar to trying to establish a city on the moon in my opinion). it is probably too early to tell for certain, but it should be considered that this is onle of those cataclysmic natural events that literally reshapes the landscape and may be part of a larger trend in shifting ocean geography that we simply will not be able to push back against.
WonderK,
I agree with you again. As architects, we should be optimistic about rebuilding NOLA and Mississippi. Building below sea level can be done successfully. Just look at Denmark. Mulitple layers of defense against catastrophic flooding. We also need to work listen to some of the environmentalist. I just hope that reclaiming the area wont get mired down in political bullshit like NYC.
to truly believe that we shouldn't reoccupy new orleans, you would also have to argue that the entirety of holland should be vacated and returned to the sea.
i see los dog got in first. but i think holland is what los dog means.
If there is one thing I'd like to see come out of this, it's a reassessment of the philosophy of the Corps. I fully understand that a Cat. 4 hurricane would have devastated any city, but the problems that NO faces now are as much the fault of the Corps' pigheaded methods as Katrina. The extensive system of levees and dikes have allowed people to build in insafe (read: sub-sea level) areas, develop land in former wetland buffer areas, exponentially accelerated the Mississippi River and made the eventual breaches catastrophic. We should have had this discussion after the 1993 Mississippi River floods, but the Corps characterized that as a 500-year event and viewed it as an anomoly.
The NO cleanup is going to cost $25b. That alone seems to call for a national discussion on how and where we build.
Ironically, judging from the NYT.com aerial photos, the driest parts of NO are next to the Mississippi River levees.
yep. behind the levees is the high ground. the lowest areas are back from midcity toward the lakefront.
well, chaglang, it depends on how you look at it. people were already there before the current levee system--well before the corp. of engineers. the levees were built to protect them. are you suggesting the us gov't not protect people that live in areas of danger or not allow them to live there? in the opinion of experts katrina is a 500 year event. so was the '93 flood--two separate events.
as not per has said before, no one is going to dismantle san francisco, l.a., and other towns along major fault lines in CA when those places are far more frequently in peril than N.O.--and their 500 year event is still pending.
so next year when the Big One hits san fran., the I-Told-You-So's will be out in full force. but where are they now?
it's natural to overreact to an extraordinary event, but common sense should be seeping back in soon.
we could tell "Georgy W" that global warming has something to do with these dissasters and the Kyoto agreement he did not want to sign FOR THE GOOD of his people.....well there it is, the gas guzzlerSUVs have a bad side don't'em
global warming is real. it is a serious problem.
but, from all data and studies, it has no link to the increased hurricane activity of the past few years (which, by the way is predicted to last for at least another decade).
there are much better and more accurate arguments against human's disregard for the environment than hurricanes--it only confuses the issue with misinformation.
We seem to be having a lot of 500 year events, which makes me think that this is an overused bit of hyperbole. Certainly Katrina was not a 500 year hurricane - she wasn't even Category 5 when she made land. Then there is the question of whether the amount of development along the MR and in NO are exacerbating small events into catastrophic ones.
True, there were people living there, behind levees, before the Corps. But in the 1930's, the purpose of the levees went from defensive to offensive, meaning that the government was no longer using them to protect the populace, they were intent on controlling the natural environment. IMHO, this is a major shift in philosophy and the root of our present troubles.
People may live wherever they want, but I seriously question the wisdom of living below sea level, next to the ocean. And I question the wisdom of a government policy that allows/promotes this. That's where LA and SF are different - out there isn't a federally funded infrastructure placing people in more danger than they would ordinarily be.
It seems to me that the problems of building in a below-sea-level area or on land that is prone to flooding are a lot more managable than building anywhere close to a fault line. The engineering and materials exist but no one is willing to pay for them, or they can't. As norm mentioned on the other thread, much of this was forseen but, alas, Shrub cut funding for protecting the area when he needed money for his war.
But I don't want to distract from the issues at hand. Better to dwell on how to help rather than deal in hindsight.
on 500 yr. events:
no one is calling katrina a 500 year hurricane (and if they are, they shouldn't be). key word: "event", which is all inclusive--the flooding, destruction, loss of lives, etc. it's based on probablilities and, of course, not an actual 500 year timeframe.
on levees:
protecting the populace = controlling the natural environment. always has--there's no change in philosophy. they only began to do it better.
on living locations:
no one is "placing" the people of new orleans below sea level. they've placed themselves. the levee system simply protects them. they were there before the levees. and the real difference between NO and SF is that there are protections against flooding--none for earthquakes.
in one statement you say "people may live wherever they want" yet go on to say that the fed. gov't is to blame for allowing them to do so. which is it? you cannot stradle this issue.
regarding holland, i believe that approximately 40% of the country is land that has been reclaimed from the sea, not the entire country. secondly, most of the reclaimed land has been used for agricultural purposes, none of holland's major traditional cities are located there. moreover, the dutch have spent hundreds of years working on this project while new orleans has ostensibly been nothing more than a patchwork job from the start.
i'm not an expert on these things, i just feel that it may not be worth re-occupying an abandoned and soggy metro that continues to be a liability. from experience, i can say that an inch of water in a basement...excuse me, the garden level, can be enough to make for an unpleasant habitation experience. our office flooded once and years later it still smells. by comparison, many of these new orleans buildings are sitting 3-9 feet of water and will continue to do so for days if not weeks. all the infrastructural services (water, electricity, sewage, the all-important levees) are a complete mess. add the destruction of the looters into the mix and its immediate future seems pretty grim.
and i'm only half kidding about bringing people to detroit. as i said, it has the infrastructure, but could use more meat on its bones, i.e., people. with the mayoral re-election coming up, maybe hizzoner kwame should offer to pick up refugees in his wife's comfy navigator in exchange for votes. plus, i'd love to see an infusion of new orleans culture especially music into the detroit scene. even 5-10,000 refugees could be a huge shot in the arm. cajun and creole meets motown and techno.
There's a difference between putting up a levee to protect your crops from a flood and putting up a levee to redirect a body of water on a daily basis. It's the difference between a fence around your yard and a retaining wall.
All I'm saying is that the Corps is promoting an untenable situation. It's not as simple as "protection". Take a look at "Control of Nature" by John McPhee, or "Rising Tide" by... (can't remember his name). They provide good history and background on the Corps and the NO area.
holland = province in the netherlands (country) consisting largely of reclaimed land and mostly below sea level.
oh, and amsterdam, leiden, haarlem, and delft are all below sea level and the hague and rotterdam are close (within 1m, i think).
...just to set the record straight
I don't think we need to discuss if we should rebuild NOLA. Do you all really think that once they clean it up the population will return to the city? The tourism business alone will be dead for years. People won't have anything to return to. No jobs, no homes, nothing. Those people being bussed to Texas just became permanent residents there, not a doubt in my mind. If NOLA was a city of 1.3 million, I'd guess it will never see that population in several generations.
have the Army Corps ever done anything good???
Also, we need to preserve more of our wetlands to absorb an influx of h2o like this. I dont really know too much about water management, but I wonder what would have happened if all of the paved surfaces in these areas were permeable, and ablbe to let water pass thru into the earth??
I also agree with Puddles about Detroit (and Cincinnati, while were at it)
A, I really think you under estimate the power of place and people. This is not the first disaster natural or man made. People always rebuild. Mexico, California, Indonesia, India, Hirosima, the list goes on and on. Of course it will take time. The biggest delay will be from the politicans.
I don't underestimate anything...this just in from CNN.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Thousands of people forced from their homes by Hurricane Katrina have crammed into the New Orleans convention center, where they've had no food, no water and no word on when help would come.
And people are dying.
CNN's Chris Lawrence described "many, many" bodies, inside and outside the facility on New Orleans' Riverwalk. (Watch report on the desperate conditions at the convention center -- 2:54 )
"There are multiple people dying at the convention center," he said. "There was an old woman, dead in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over her, pushed up against a wall. Horrible, horrible conditions.
"We saw a man who went into a seizure, literally dying right in front of us."
People were "being forced to lived like animals," Lawrence said -- surrounded by piles of trash and feces.
He said while he has seen police SWAT teams drive by in armored vehicles, no one has stopped to talk with the refugees.
"People are asking, 'Where are the buses? Where is the plan? Where is the help?" he said.
I'm glad I'm not the Mayor, because he is going to have to tell the citizens of his city that THERE IS NO PLAN.
what you say about poplulation, A, may be true--i tend to agree with you. but what bothers me is the negativity and defeatist attitude of "oh well, maybe they shouldn't be there to begin with--they certainly shouldn't go back."
this is a problem and an opportunity no on in the past 5 or 6 generations has had a chance to deal with--not since the last of the great city fires (baltimore) has an american city had the need to rebuild this extensively. rather than architects placing blame and promoting abandonment of a cultural center (culture has much to with Place, by the way), we should recognize that people will return and that we can and should be involved in place-making decisions.
whether or not it's dangerous for them to live there, they have the right--please, is anyone ready to say that the government should have the ability to relocate large populations of people based on the possibility of natural disaster? i'll take all the benefits of a city like new orleans and all the cultural contributions it has made to this country and bear the risk of devastation (once, so far, in its history).
wonderk is right. we can contribute to what's next.
thanks st. for pointing out that a number of dutch cities are, in fact, below sea level. i stand corrected, or at least better informed. even so, in my opinion new orleans is a wash...unless we can get some dutch engineers to migrate there.
...or rem?
our Hero. (sigh)
St. - setting the record straight - this isn't the first devastation in the city's history:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/garden/01fred.html (toward the end)
It all seems a little nuts to me. But that's why I don't live there - only visit every couple of years.
Perhaps we could put all the buildings on giant sponges and gauge the severity of the flood by the height the city reaches.
arguments against rebuilding n.o. miss the point completely. there's nothing to argue. if you had ever lived there, that option would be unimaginable. so, an academic discussion about should we/shouldn't we is fine, but irrelevant. there is no place like new orleans, and new orleans will be back - as glorious and decadent and funky and beautiful as ever.
"do you know what it means to miss new orleans
and miss her each night and day
i know i’m not wrong because the feeling’s
getting stronger the longer i stay away..."
apply this to temporary housing as well and you're covered.
to those thinking it is a bad idea to rebuild because we were tempting nature, consider the fact that New Orleans has not always been below sea level.
Levees were created back to prevent the Mississippi from flooding the city which at the times was at sea level. Also the river and its tributaries have been altered over time for shipping channels.
So what happens is that the levees which were created to protect the city were preventing sediment flowing down from the river to build up and support the land. SO with no sediment coming into the river basin, the land (the river basin) continually sank into the ground.
SO its not somuch the city had been built below sea level as it was the fact that the city was/is sinking into the ground.
I believe as recent as the mid 80s most of the downtown area was at sea level, of course today it is considerably lower.
... protective barrier islands are disappearing due to lack of sedimentation, the steadily sinking new orleans now sits at an average of 8 ft. below sea level, plus worldwide ocean levels have gotten larger and climate patterns have gotten increasingly unpredictable..
so it's not as simple as 'they knew what was coming to them'
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.