The last news i heard said the 80% of the city was under water because of the failed levees.
My opinion is that they should let the city go. Relocate everyone and let mother nature retake the wetlands and rebuild the Mississippi river delta. Its been screwed up enough by us, and look what happened. It should be obvious to everyone by now that we cannot have a long-term city in this location. This is just inevitably going to happen again.
Abandoning the city is unlikely, yes, but thats what I’d prefer to see happen. It’d be a shitload cheaper for taxpayers as well. What say you?
Could you please expand on that a little? The reason I’m asking is because someone here at my work made the same statement (or a very similar one) and I’d be interested in reading your points (especially because I kind of agree with you but I’m not really sure WHY if that makes any sense).
Eventually, though, whether because of global warming or just natural forces, the cost of maintaining New Orleans at its current location is going to outweigh the benefits. It really isn’t a sustainable location for a city.
Even though I’m a planner, and I love cities, I sometimes question why we spend so much effort to maintain cities that, because of environmental issues or a changing economy, are really no longer viable? Take my hometown, Buffalo, which recieves hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state aid every year, yet it’s still struggling, still in economic decline. The reasons for having a city in that location – a break in bulk point between the location of raw materials required for certain types of heavy industry and the market for the resulting products – is now moot. The only reason the city is still there is because it always has been there; it’s “home” to a million people. Aside from sentimental reasons such as family, chicken wings, history or architecture, its existence can no longer be justified.
A century ago, if a city lost its reason for existing – the gold was extracted, the price of silver dropped – it was abandoned. Would we all be better off if the Buffalos and Youngstowns of the country were just abandoned? Their architectural treasures can be preserved and made a part of a national park, or rebuilt elsewhere; their institutions of higher learning, library collections, culutre and art can be relocated to more prosperous cities; their people and businesses can move away like they have been for the past 50 years. Why not just pack it in, follow many past members of the Buffalo diaspora, and rebuild the place outside of Charlotte, North Carolina? What difference does it matter that Buffalo is in New York or North Carolina? Same thing with New Orleans; should it be moved en masse to a more sustainable, viable location?
I think it would be a shame to abandon the city. New Orleans is my favourite city, after all. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop was built sometime before 1772. There’s a lot of great architecture there. Yes, the projects to protect the city that have been undertaken in the last hundred years or so have had the effect of increasing the likelihood of what has happened happening. But if nothing else, I think the French Quarter should be preserved and protected.
I second the request for more information. Why do we need to keep the city alive? Like elmwood, I’m a New Yorker and have often wondered the same thing about Buffalo.
D.C. could stand with a good measure of that kind of life and character.
Anybody else have the Tragically Hip song going through their head:
“Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can Forksake the dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what’s this river I’m in
New Orleans is sinking and I don’t want to swim”
Similar logic could be applied to various situations. Why continue to rebuild California? Another earthquake will destroy it. Why rebuild across the midwest? Tornados will return to wreak havoc before long. Why attempt to replenish eroded beaches along the Atlantic coast? Why try to extinguish fires that destroy housing built along the wildland urban interface?
Because it has been and will continue to be one of mankind’s goals to eke out an existence on this orb despite the actions of Mother Nature to kill us all off.
I say you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about either. Besides the oil industry, New Orleans is the largest port in the nation and the third largest in the world.. You cannot replace that even by moving up river. The Mississippi River at New Orleans can handle almost all ocean going ships. That is not the case even as far upriver as Baton Rouge where the river is less wide and deep.
In short, you have a city that is absolutely vital as a port supporting the whole nation and especially the interior. You have a city that is extremely important to the oil industry. And, on a softer scale, you have a city that is culturally and historically unique and is one of the major tourist destinations in the country.
It is possible to make New Orleans less prone to these kinds of risks. The Army Corps of Engineers has been studying the problem for years. Now is the time when people will think seriously about what needs to be done and what we need to do it.
Protecting the entire city of New Orleans may only cost about as much as Boston’s Big Dig and all that did was give us a few stupid tunnels to drive in.
“Letting New Orleans go” isn’t like letting Dust Flat, CA go once the gold gave out.
New Orleans is home to half a million people. That’s home, folks. You people were screaming bloody murder not two months ago when New London acquired the homes of a whole lot fewer using eminent domain. A foolish consistency may be the hob-goblin of little minds - but at least it’s consisten. “We can’t let the city use eminent domain to acquire the home of these poor people, but we’ll just let the Mississippi River reclaim New Orleans.” Makes perfect sense.
New Orleans is an economic engine. It is one of the busiest ports in the world. Aside from the infrastructure value, you’ve got the value of the jobs created. Every stevedore, crane operator, and tug captain spends his money elsewhere. That keeps other people employed.
New Orleans, the city itself, has value. That’s real estate we’re talking about. Who is going to compensate the property owners for the value of their property (land, buildings, infrastructure, inventories, etc. etc. etc.)? The US Government? Please don’t decry the size and cost of gov’t if you’re looking to the Feds for help on this one.
I’d suggest you read Jane Jacob’s Life and Death of American Cities . That’ll shed some light on how and why cities are created, thrive, and change. I don’t believe that anyone has every just walked away from something like New Orleans.
Have you ever been to New Orleans? My best friend lives and works there (he’s okay, last I heard), and New Orleans is one of my favorite cities–there’s really nothing else like it in the U.S., in terms of architecture, history, ambiance. It would be like losing the Library at Alexandria, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. We should be doing everything we can to save and protect such treasures.
Unfortunately, it being New Orleans, they’ll never actually get off their asses and do anything about it . . .
That may be true if it were only New Orleanians that were left to figure out a way to protect the city (it is hard to read engineering diagrams while you are bloto and naked women keep distracting you).
However, as I pointed out above, New Orleans has too much strategic value nationally and will have to be saved at any cost. The Army Corps of Engineers has already studied the problem and knows what needs to be done. It will take federal assistance but the city will be rebuilt and shored up for when this happens again.
But … what is the cost of rebuilding those places, compared to the benefit those places bring to the economy and culture? California has an economy that is larger than many European industrialized nations, and the cost of earthquake repairs is probably far less than the contributions LA or San Francisco make to the economy, not to mention the culture as a while. Besides, people want to live there for various reasons; jobs, weather, and so on.
Now, let’s say an R7 or R8 earthquake hits Buffalo. Here’s a city with a minimal contribution to the national economy. It already struggles to keep the businesses, institutions and residents it already has. Very few people move there unless they have a job offer, and those that stay do so mainly because of inertia - it’s where their family and friends are. If you spend billions to rebuild it, the city will still hemorrhage businesses and people; the push forces like high upstate New York taxes and crappy upstate New York weather haven’t changed.
Let’s say, hypothetically, North America was devoid of humans until now, and is just starting to be settled by 21st century Europeans. because of air conditioning, cheap transportation and other advances in technology, the application of classic geographic thoery regarding city location (break in bulk points and fall lines) is far less of a factor than it was in the 1800s. Would a city be established in a sunny valley with a Mederterrainian climate next to the Pacific Ocean, despite the threat of earthquakes? How about the cloudy, cold area where Lake Erie is channeled into a strait connecting it with Lake Ontario? What about a swamp near the Gulf of Mexico?
