Thanks, msmith537 and everyone else here who explained - I really appreciate it!
I was being facetious.
I’m proposing that we create a list of expendable cities:
- New Orleans (flooding, too old, too many drunks and stippers)
- San Francisco (earthquakes, too many gay people, and don’t get me started on those hills…)
- Venice (built on canals, even older than New Orleans, really old buildings, Italians)
- Amsterdam (built on canals AND dikes, probably too many gay people and strippers, hash bars)
Other candidates?
This is the issue I’m surprised not to hear more about. Everything I’ve read about the Old River control structures seems to say that the Corps cannot prevent this capture in the long run. What happens to New Orleans when the Mississippi River flows to the sea fifty or a hundred miles west of the city??
That’s a pretty good list. I would like to point out however that New Orleans is a gay mecca too in case there is some kind of point system involved.
As the newsman says in the movie Airplane, “I say, let them die!”
Minor hijack:
I’m interested in this subject. Is there a good book for the lay reader? Would the Jane Jacob book mentioned by plnnr above qualify?
Og yes. For days. Glad I’m not the only one.
While I see the points that the OP is raising - there’s a human reaction that any cost is worth it to save one’s home. This isn’t a rational decision, it’s an emotional one. And no matter how one talks about cost benefit analysis that kind of reasoning isn’t going to affect those people most directly affected by the proposal to make a New New Orleans in a more reasonable location.
I’d also like to point out to elmwood and Anaamika that there is a big difference between talking about relocating New Orleans, a metropolis that exists, now, in spite of natural forces that want to get rid of it, and letting Buffalo die. Buffalo is in economic decline, and a poster-child for the Rust Belt, sure. But it’s not in constant danger of flooding - unless you count snow. 
There is an inertia to a metropolitan area that once established is hard to shift. It is possible for me to believe that sooner or later rationality will win with respect to New Orleans. I don’t believe that the rationality that you’re speaking of for Buffalo will happen. Frankly, part of Buffalo’s problem is the aid it is getting - unlike other areas that have had their original raison d’etre disappear with changing economic forces, Buffalo has been getting enough aid to stagger onwards, trying to revitalize itself as a manufacturing and transshipment point. Had things gone differently* we could be talking about ‘The Niagara Corridor’ instead of ‘Silicon Valley.’
Instead of trying to revitalize the dying industry of the area, I would think people should be looking for new opportunities. But that’s harder to legislate, and sell to voters. Aid for formerly productive industries will always look more palatable to political types than actually fostering innovation. But it rarely works in the long run. I could go on about how Eastman Kodak stabbed itself in the back - repeatedly - with the way it responded to the advent of digital photography for the same reasons.
Sorry, I’m getting off topic. All I really wanted to say was that Gabe is proposing a rational solution to an emotional problem, and that’s going to be a harder sell than the ‘simple’ solution of rebuilding. And I don’t think anyone is interested in spending the politcal clout to sell it.
Jacob’s doesn’t speak so much to geography as she does to the individual components of the cities themselves - why neighborhoods are important, for instance.
I’ll go through my library and get some titles that speak more directly to geography and get back in touch.
Contrary to your ass, NO’s economy is largely based on tourism–which, coincidentally, is alcohol-based in this case. Who do you think supports the jazz clubs, museums, and historical societies? And restaraunts? And hotels? And casinos?
Tourists. Conventioneers. Many, many of them merrily drinking. Without whom NO certainly would not exist in its present form. (Well, pre-Katrina form.)
Imagine Mardi Gras without liquor? It’s Macy’s Day parade, only sweatier. Not too many people flock to New York for that.
Take away the French Quarter, the restaraunts, the hotels and the riverboats and what would be left of the city? Almost nothing.
I reiterate: the economy of NO itself is largely alcohol-based.
Your friend at Wiiliams Sonoma will probably do a gang-busters business restocking homes.
That is, he would, if his inventory hasn’t been destroyed.
The tone of your post indicated kind of a sneer at tourists. You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.
[QUOTE=Rysdad]
Take away the French Quarter, the restaraunts, the hotels and the riverboats and what would be left of the city? Almost nothing.
I reiterate: the economy of NO itself is largely alcohol-based.
[QUOTE]
You’re leaving out the Port of New Orleans.
Given current weather conditions, perhaps we’d be better off trying a barge.
I suppose you know that port has alcohol in it? :dubious:
I sneer at tourists who come rolling into town for a couple days of drinking and whoring and then say the city’s not worth saving 'cause it’s nothing but a bunch of bars and whores, yeah.
This is a mistake of economies of scale. If a charming old house or an historic neighborhood was subjected to catastrophic flooding and was in a flood zone where such flooding was likely to be repeated, then yes, abandonment might be the right option, but a port city isn’t a house or neighborhood. New Orleans is a major center of industry, commerce, petroleum, etc., and is now the site of a massive environmental disaster that absolutely has to be cleaned up. There’s simply no way of putting a lid on it and saying “city’s over” now.
Ratchet it back, Shagnasty. This isn’t the Pit.
TVeblen
People, people! You’re being too conservative!
I agree with the OP in that the city should not be rebuilt as it was, below sea-level and river-level in an enclosure protected by levees and continuously drained by pumps.
But that’s not the only way it can be rebuilt.
Imagine this:
The levees are opened, allowing the Mississippi to resume replenishing the wetlands and restoring their protection, letting the Mississippi chase the Atchafalaya and find a new opening to the sea, letting the waters find new levels and directions.
Once we know where the waters are going, we can rebuild.
The city is rebuilt on pilings and barges and smaller islands above the new adjusted level of the waters, even more like Venice. Historical districts and city treasures can be surrounded in smaller, more manageable enclosures–or rebuilt on higher islands, as many were rebuilt in Europe.
The ports and railway lines and pipelines can be rebuilt on bridges and causeways as well.
Only slightly off-topic, but I remember when I was living in NYC and went to Fire Island for a week, I asked why someone would have an expensive home where probably every 5 years or so, a storm would damage or maybe even totally destroy the building. The homeowner said, “there is a special insurance from the Federal Government that costs practically nothing, so if my house is totally destroyed, I can get it rebuilt better for free.” He was dead serious. And no one thought it odd that people continued to build homes over and over on land that was basically a disaster waiting to happen. If that were the case, the entire State of Florida would be a ghost town (ghost state?) by now.
I think the better idea is to figure out a way to make buildings and cities that can take the brunt of what Mother Nature has to offer. The earthquake building codes in California have worked quite well so far. A tremor that would kill thousands in impoverished countries barely breaks a window in California. (Of course, when that 9.5 hits, all bets are off.)
It will be interesting to see the remedies that are designed/suggested to make sure a disaster of this scope doesn’t happen in New Orleans again.
I just love the idea that cities are like furniture and you can just pick them up and rearrange them when the mood strikes you.
NO is flooded. That doesn’t mean it’s been uterly destroyed. Can we wait a few days and access the damage before we throw the baby out with the water?
Stuff has to be loaded and unloaded at the mouth of the Mississippi river. All kinds of stuff. And that stuff moves to and from places all over America.
Speaking of which, arent’ we called The United States of America? What is with this insane, you’re on your own, thinking. No city or state in America can get by on it’s own. We need each other and we need to help each other when necessary. Yes, when we rebuild NO, and we will, measures to try and protect the city better will be taken. The idea that another level 4 or 5 Hurricane is going to hit NO five minutes after we finish repairing the damage from this one is ridiculous. How long has it been since Andrew? How long has it been since the last major hurricane hit NO? Wasn’t that '69? (dude)
Eve, I worked in New Orleans–as part of the travel and tourism industry.
I’ve also visited it as a tourist.
And, yes, there are a bunch or bars and whores. That’s not debatable.
You questioned my assessment that the economy of NO was largely alcohol-based (as included in the tourism). There’s no question about that, either. It is.
That you’d condemn the same people that provide the basis for the city’s existence is denying the obvious.