The
full measure of the catastrophe in The Big Difficult has yet
to be taken; indeed, the catastrophe is still worsening.
There will be, as soon as the city can be re-opened, many
funerals. Mardi Gras -- should there even be one next year --
will undoubtedly have a special theme of mourning. I am in
mourning already.
As one who has at various phases of life called the New
Orleans region both "home" and "client," I have a special love
for the place that has sometimes expressed itself
irrationally. Helping people escape from rationality has
always been one of the city's unique talents. One does things
both in New Orleans, and for New Orleans, that one would be
unlikely to do in, or for, other places. The city inspires a
freedom of spirit, which in turn creates a fierce loyalty.
It is no wonder then that city leadership was already talking about rebuilding, even before
the destruction was complete. Something like three-quarters of
the city's residents are, after all, native-born. New Orleans
is home, period, often over many generations. And those who
are not native tend to quickly feel a similar sense of
belonging there.
So take it for granted that New Orleans will be rebuilt. If
the economics look daunting, if the physical challenge seems
staggering, if the news reports of the day speak of chaos and
disaster, if the idea of rebuilding a city in a basin placed
in between a huge lake and big river seems foolish, count on
emotion and passion to overwhelm these counter-arguments. And
the United States, as a nation, is not likely to allow a major
city -- especially one so strategically placed -- to be
abandoned.
Massive resources will be mobilized, first to care for the
victims, then to clean up ... then repair and rebuild. Where
to begin with such a gargantuan task? How can it be done in
such a way that something like this never happens again ...
and in a way that helps lead the world toward a generally
better future?
What follows are very preliminary thoughts on principles
for eventually creating a "New New Orleans," one that
is more environmentally secure, more economically successful,
and more socially healthy and equitable, while retaining
the culture that made it world famous. As the news reports
continue to create a picture of the city's horrible descent into hell, such an
exercise feels a bit foolhardy; but there is so much
dreaming to be done, to restore this great and wondrous
city, that the dreaming must begin now.
These thoughts build on the earlier work of a consortium of
regional leaders, which I and my colleagues had the privilege
of supporting over the last few years. The results of that
work seem, in many ways, even more relevant and urgent now.
Background: The End of Fatalism
Beginning in 2001, my firm was engaged by a consortium of
regional leaders in New Orleans to help them design and launch
an ambitious regional initiative, called Top 10
by 2010. The sponsor was the regional Chamber of
Commerce, now renamed Greater New Orleans, Inc. The
co-chairs were very prominent businessmen, from distinctly
different sides of the political aisle. The initiative's
Steering Committee, Civic Leaders Panel, and Technical Expert
Group were characterized by a remarkable diversity, one not
previously seen in regional development initiatives. Local
governments, banks, arts organizations, environmental
advocates, universities, social justice campaigns, major
property developers, leading minority business owners ... this
extraordinary group worked together for a year and a half to
craft a new foundation for regional progress. It was just in
the process of re-forming and assessing progress so far when
Katrina struck.
The Top 10 by 2010 vision was simple: dramatically raise
the city's profile as a successful, special, and wonderful
place to live, such that it would begin to make "Top 10" lists
in the US by the year 2010. The strategy was also simple: to
actually make the city a more successful, special and
wonderful place, so that more businesses, families, and
tourists would come.
But the strategy proposed was not to import the formulas of
other places. By focusing on improving New Orleans on its own
terms, we reasoned, the region would also rise in its standing
on those terms valued by the rest of the country. Better
education for all, a better dynamic link between the arts
community and the economic development community, more
capitalizing on the excellent universities as a source of
intellectual capital, cleaning up basic environmental
problems, preserving and highlighting cultural heritage, and
addressing the entrenched inequities were just some of the
strategic conclusions to emerge from an intensive process of
polling, dialogue, indicator development, trend analysis, and
vision development.
One of the most important, and surprising, conclusions of
our initial research concerned an apparent lack of skill, on
the part of regional residents, in envisioning a better
future. Asked to name three things about their community that
they thought would "get better" over the next ten years, only
about a third of our 2,600 telephone respondents could, or
would, do it. (This figure compares to 96% in a similar survey
performed in northern California.)
Many of those on the Steering Committee were less surprised
at this result than we were; they spoke often of a persistent
regional fatalism, a sense that things "would always be this
way." That attitude, some said, was the greatest hindrance to
progress in fundamental challenge areas like cleaning up
corruption or improving education -- steps that were necessary
to improving the business climate generally. Indeed, the
initiative's Steering Committee itself found it difficult to
believe our finding, based on US Census data, that poverty had
been significantly reduced during the 1990s, just as it had in
many other cities around the country. It was hard for some to
accept that anything was getting better, much less one of the
city's worst and most visible problems.
Overcoming fatalism, helping people learn to dream, began
to emerge as a critical first priority ... and something all
participants could theoretically embrace as a common strategy,
throughout the region, in every sector. "We have to market a
message of hope to our own people," said a regional business
leader in one of our final planning sessions.
But the creation of the Top 10 by 2010 initiative -- which
used the development of indicators of sustainable development
as a starting point for building regional collaboration and
common strategy -- was itself an indicator that fatalism was
on the wane, at least among the emerging regional leadership.
Just as we were delivering our first major report, elements of
that leadership were beginning a transformation. The new mayor
had four department heads arrested for corruption and thrown
in jail. A dynamic group of young business leaders won a new
basketball franchise, reversing a series of business losses
that had left the region with only one major corporate
headquarters. Several top executives at the regional Chamber
of Commerce were replaced, its name was changed, and the new
crew was initially headed up by the same woman who was
directing Top 10 by 2010.
These were just a few of the changes we observed
first-hand, and countless others appeared also to be under
way. There was hope stirring in the city. When we recently
updated the indicators for Top 10 by 2010, we were ourselves
amazed to discover that whatever was happening in New Orleans
was quickly being noticed elsewhere. In just three years, on
the Forbes/Milken list of Best Places for Business and Careers,
the New Orleans region had climbed from number 194 (out of
200) to number 110, a jump of 84 places. Suddenly, cracking
the Top 10 by the year 2010 -- a goal that looked wildly
ambitious and unrealistic in 2001 -- actually seemed possible.
When the Worst Has Already Happened
A scenario like the one that played out with hurricane
Katrina was certainly known to the region's leadership. Even
National Geographic had recently written about the threat to
New Orleans from a monster hurricane (October 2004 issue), and that was
just one of the most visible in a torrent of similar articles,
popular and scientific, both inside and outside the region.
Indeed, the very first indicator in the 2002 "Top 10 by
2010 Regional Indicators Report" is called "Coastal Erosion,
Storm, and Flood Damage." It shows rising insurance costs over
time, from more frequent flooding, caused by a combination of
factors that included disappearing coastal lands and more
frequent and intense hurricanes. (Framing the issue in terms
of dollars ensured that it got everyone's attention.) The
report notes that:
Taken together, these threats
have raised serious, and difficult, questions about our
long-term future. And the data from the last 10 years --
showing a steady increase, punctuated by the enormous spike
in costs from the May 1995 flood -- confirm that the threat
is not merely academic; it is economic, as well as social
and environmental.
The 1995 "spike" of over half a billion dollars in damages
now seems, of course, like nothing. But in retrospect, there
was probably no way for the city to avoid the fate that has
now befallen it. Yes, awareness of the problem was rising.
Even very conservative business leaders had noted to me
privately that they were worried about global warming and
getting hit by "the big one"; they were just proscribed
politically, they said, from talking very much about it. One
went so far as to draw up plans for me, on the back of a
napkin, showing his vision of a tremendous sea wall and
causeway across the Gulf, complete with casinos and beach
resorts.
But in the technical language of sustainability theorists,
"respite time was shorter than response time." That is, the
signals had come too late. Awareness of the threat had finally
reached some key decision-makers in a convincing way ... but
not in time for them to overcome various kinds of resistance
-- economic, political, psychological -- and begin to respond.
It turned out that the clock on the time-bomb, the amount of
"respite time" left before irreversible catastrophe struck,
had only a few years left on it. This was insufficient time to
make, or even to convince people to start making, the massive
investments that would have been required to avoid this
catastrophe.
In other words: Even if the regional leadership, from the
moment some of them had truly understood the nature of the
threat, had begun mobilizing all of the available resources
and willpower to try to protect the region from such a storm,
and even if they had started a frantic process of rebuilding
lost landscapes (which buffer the region from storm and storm
surge), raising levees, redoubling the pumping infrastructure
and the like, it would probably not have had time to avoid
most of what Katrina has now done to New Orleans.
So, the worst has happened. The city has, in functional
terms, been destroyed. Fatalism has had its ultimate day.
From here forward, New Orleans can choose its own fate.
Principles for Rebuilding a Bright, Green, Safe New
Orleans
What follows is a first draft, tentative at best, of some
ideas for what New Orleans might become, now that the choice
of what to become is forced upon it.
1. Work with nature, and technology, to protect the
city from future worst-case scenarios
Not since the fires and earthquakes of earlier centuries
has the US been given the opportunity to rebuild a major city.
Conditions are very different now, in terms of both what we
can do, and what we must prepare for. The debate as to whether
climate change additionally fueled Katrina's intensity began
hours after the storm struck, and will continue for years.
Whether or not global warming played a role in this
catastrophe, it is absolutely the case that a new New Orleans
must be built for much greater resilience in the face of a
changing climate.
The city was always one of the world's most vulnerable;
that is what makes rebuilding it such an extraordinary
opportunity for learning. If we can make New Orleans a secure
place for the 21st century, we can make every coastal city
secure.
Start with the basics. The system of levees built to
protect New Orleans was, we now know, tragically inadequate.
They were built to withstand a Category 3 storm, but we live
in a time when Category 4 and 5 storms are becoming more
common, and likely. Not only has the worst already happened to
New Orleans; the worst could easily come again, and soon.
If there is to be a New Orleans, it must be first and
foremost be made completely safe from flooding in any
conceivable worst-case scenario. If it cannot withstand a
Category 5 hurricane churning straight up the mouth of the
Mississippi, few will dare to live there.
Is such a thing possible? The short answer is: it must be.
But it will require assembling the smartest engineering minds
on the planet. That is why the rebuilding effort should call
in the Dutch.
There is no one in the world smarter at managing land and
water than the water engineers of the Netherlands. They have a
thousand years of cumulative experience. New Orleans' famous
pumps, which worked adequately for many years, were actually
of Dutch design, and early on in the Top 10 by 2010 process, I
brought in a leading Dutch economist to try to strengthen the
bonds between these geographically and even somewhat
culturally similar regions. (It is not hard to think of New
Orleans and Amsterdam in the same sentence.)
But pumps, levees, and high-tech sea walls are just the
beginning. The other major partner for rebuilding a secure
city must be Nature itself.
The science of living more sustainably on the Mississippi
Delta is actually quite well developed. The mechanisms that
were causing erosion of wetlands and coastal islands are
understood, and can be reversed. The task involves rethinking
the management of the entire river system. It involves
restoring wetlands, the "land" part of which were being erased
by lack of sedimentation from above, and getting sucked down
under the water level from below, by subsidence caused by oil
removal. It involves letting the river rebuild the intricate
network of coastal islands and shoals that buffer the region
from storm surges. It's about learning to work with the
natural features of Southeastern Lousiana, rather than
continuously fighting a pitched battle against them, or
attempting to bend them to the will of vested economic
interests.
A New New Orleans will likely depend on a combination of
very large, very high-tech storm and flood protection systems
(such as the Dutch and the British have recently built in the
North Sea, to protect their polders and London respectively),
and much more "natural" land and river management. Yes, this
will change the face of the region, economically and
geographically. But Katrina has already made that
inevitable.
To those worried about the ecological impacts of building
protective structures in the Gulf of Mexico: remember that
significant parts of the areas to be affected are officially
classified as a "dead zone" already. This effort would
actually give us a chance to bring those parts of the Gulf
back to life.
2. Use rebuilding to lift the poor to safer economic
and social ground
It is a bitter thing to view the photographs and videos of
the refugees left behind in New Orleans, and to see that most
of them were obviously poor and black. An anonymous email from
a rescue worker noted that those who did not evacuate were
those who could not afford to evacuate: those who had no
private car, no resources, no people to turn to. Katrina was
not alone in her killing; her accomplice was terrible poverty.
That poverty turned the city into a living hell of random
shootings and suffering for the refugees still trapped there,
days after the storm.
A New New Orleans must be a city dedicated to the genuine
well-being of all her citizens. Poverty had been reduced in
the 1990s; but pockets of terrible, entrenched poverty were
still far too common in that city prior to its deluge. Those
pockets are the one thing that must not be restored; instead,
the city must charge into rebuilding with an eye to reducing
poverty drastically, by reducing the conditions that create
it. The now-destroyed, once-crumbling houses in the 9th Ward
(the poorest section of the city) must be replaced with
decent, modern, and yes green housing (see below). The people
who live in New Orleans must be employed in rebuilding it,
thereby gaining marketable skills in the process.
While simple morality should make this principle clear and
sufficiently compelling, it also behooves the nation to
rebuild the city in a way that uplifts even its poorest
residents, for simple security reasons. The alternative is
chaos, and the scenes of looting, shooting, armored vehicles
and violence that followed eerily in the hurricane's wake are
but a foreshadowing of what New Orleans could become,
semi-permanently, if a truly visionary and socially just
rebuilding does not occur.
The poor of New Orleans have suffered the worst of the
worst, starting well before Katrina; the New New Orleans must
promise them a much better life.
3. Create an economy of creativity
Another surprising finding of our initial research for Top
10 by 2010 was the lack of significant strategic contact
between the region's economic development efforts and the arts
community. New Orleans is known around the world for its
music, food, and cultural life generally; but as in most US
cities, artists and arts organizations had not been brought
into serious discussions about the future of the region, until
Top 10 by 2010 invited them. (This was also true of its
environmental advocates, who had been trying, in measured
tones, to awaken the leadership to the dangers of coastal
erosion and storm threat.)
New economic visioning processes had, after Top 10 by 2010,
resulted in the inclusion of arts and environment leaders in
economic strategic planning. This is a trend that must be
sharply strengthened. New Orleans cannot hope to revive as
simply "a place to do business." It must again become
something special, something truly wonderful; and that means
embracing creativity in all its forms, with a passionate
ferocity. It means envisioning the city as a whole as a work
of art -- one that cannot be restored exactly as it was, but
that can be recreated.
The arts are key here. New Orleans' music and cuisine, its
festivals and gardens and galleries, and even its notoriously
wild parties are the only thing that can hope to draw people
back to a place whose inundation is now etched in the world's
consciousness.
But the arts are hardly the whole story. We also learned
that the region lagged other similar places in its ability to
take the ideas being generated from its fine universities (I
graduated from one of them, Tulane, which used to bill itself
"the Harvard of the South") and turning them into economic
assets in the form of patents and businesses. So "an economy
of creativity" means embracing creativity in general as the
only viable strategy for the city's long-term economic
vitality. New Orleans has -- or rather, had, and must now
reassemble -- most of the ingredients that tend to attract
high-tech companies, including that ineffable quality of
"character".
What's required now, in addition to fundamental gritty
determination, is a new flood of creative people, who see the
chance of rebuilding a city as the creative opportunity of a
lifetime, whether they are businesspeople, architects,
sculptors, technologists ... or some fascinating new
combination. The New New Orleans must truly be new.
4. Become a clean, green showcase
Recreating a beautiful, vibrant, successful city will
require a new environmental ethic as well. The environmental
problems that plagued city in advance of the storm --
including exposure to toxic chemicals and even simple litter
-- had already caused at least one major company to decide not
to move there. The environmental damage caused by the storm
and the flooding is now incomprehensible. The rebuilding
process offers a once-in-lifetime opportunity to clean up the
city, in every way imaginable.
But cleaning up the now-magnified problems is just a small
piece of what can, and I believe must, be envisioned.
Currently the City of New Orleans exists, in part, to service
the oil and gas production and distribution infrastructure
that now lies in tatters in the Gulf of Mexico. It is likely
inevitable that this infrastructure will also be rebuilt --
massive economic and security interests will see to that.
But it would be nothing short of criminal to rebuild the
city of New Orleans and not aspire to run the place on
renewable energy. The sun shines mercilessly there; solar
panels need big markets to push their development curve up and
prices down; and so New Orleans (not to mention its sister
cities like Biloxi or Mobile, also terribly affected by this
storm) could provide a tremendous opportunity to spur the
nation's energy independence.
Sustainability economist Herman Daly always noted that
using non-renewable resources is not wrong, so long as you are
investing some portion of them adequately in the development
of their renewable replacements. New Orleans, sitting next to
30% of the nation's oil and gas production, could demonstrate
this principle in an extraordinarily visible, powerful, and
dare I say beautiful way.
New Orleans could become a living laboratory for solar
roofs, mini hydro generators, architecture that creates cool
buildings without air conditioning, electric and fuel cell
vehicles ... the whole list of green dreams for technically
sustainable world. These could become the basis of new
industries to replace the gas and oil revenues, and be partly
financed by them, as well as by the general reconstruction
funds that are already on their way.
Massive amounts of money are going to be mobilized for this
reconstruction. Massive purchasing creates massive buying
power, and this opportunity to push the nation's markets
forward in the development of 21st century technology -- by
directing that money toward the greenest alternatives
available -- must not be wasted.
5. Dare to dream
These are days of despair and sorrow for the great City of
New Orleans. Those days will not end soon. And as anyone who
has weathered the death of loved ones or the loss of a home
knows, there is no way out of grief except through it.
But what pulls us through grief is the knowledge that,
while what is permanently lost cannot be restored, new things
can be created.
The people of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf region
will need tremendous amounts of practical help, money, and
psychological support to come through this. But they will also
need dreams -- and not just their own.
It takes courage to dream in the face of catastrophe. And
courage often comes from being encouraged, with the
thoughts, wishes, hopes, words, and yes, the dreams of others.
We can all contribute to the recreation of New Orleans. We can
all dream for her, and help her residents to dream. They have
now lived through a nightmare -- one that many feared would
one day become reality, and has. We can all now help her to
dream a beautiful dream of recovery, restoration, and renewal,
and to make that dream become real as well -- for herself, and
for the world.
Afterword
This article is called "Version 1" because I expect to take
it through many revisions over time. Your comments are more
than welcome ... or perhaps this will inspire you to dream
your own dream for the recovery of New Orleans. The city will
need all the dreams we can give it.
-- Alan AtKisson
Visit us at http://www.atkisson.com/
or contact us at info@AtKisson.com
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