The New-New Orleans - Reconstruction Plans Taking Shape

This is a very interesting article I found on another news portal.

www.usatoday.com...

But what kind of city will rise from the receding waters, and when, and how?

Rebuilding is a complex issue, layered with racially sensitive questions about how to revamp the city while luring back the blue-collar and low-income residents — most of them black — who made up the bulk of the roughly half-million evacuees from the area who now are scattered across America. At stake is how much of New Orleans' identity — its unique combination of grit and refinement, bawdiness and charm — will be washed away for good.

Politicians, urban planners, business leaders and local residents with different views of a "new" New Orleans already are campaigning for their competing visions.

This article raises interesting questions, and frightening spectres, read the whole thing, it's worth the time invested.

This may be the heart of the whole conspiracy, in fact.

I sense a very rough transition period coming on as competing interests duke it out.

What if this happens in other cities? The dream of the elite might actually be realized. Modern, urban sanctuaries, connected to each other and protected from the plebes who scuffle and curse outside the walls. I'm thinking of Logan's Run here..and Mad Max..sort of an amalgam of the two.

I have a lot of interest in seeing the reconstruction efforts proceed. Anyone got any opinions on where we might be headed with this?

There's a lot of money at stake, A LOT! The contractors who cozey up to our beloved politicians are surely spraying their shorts over this windfall. The question remains, what will happen to the people displaced?

I think this is a particularly interesting facet of the Katrina Conspiracy. Anyone agree?

indeed,

after bulldozing the former ghettos and instead of building
typical, wood frame, 5o year- permanent structures....

here is an article of other 'abodes' for the worker-ants of society

www.livescience.com...

I didn't see any real plans discussed in that article--just speculation and conjecture. You can bet the city will be rebuilt and the port will be one of its major functions. The Mississippi river offers the least expensive way to ship large quantities of things into the heartland of the U.S., so that will stay and perhaps even expand. The tourist industry will stay as will the gambling industry. Beyond these things, I have no idea.

Addressing the long-term future of the city, Bush said, “My attitude is this: The people of New Orleans can lay out what New Orleans ought to look like in the future … and the federal government will help.”

Bush visits New Orleans, pledges federal aid to rebuild

This would be an ideal approach, if, it actually proceeds in that manner.

However, I can't help but to heed the nagging feeling in my gut . . .





Let's hope the citizens of New Orleans really do have a say in the rebuilding of the Big Easy.

[edit on 9/14/2005 by 12m8keall2c]

I'm still betting---no pun intended---that New Orleans re-emerges as a Las Vegas of the south, with huge tax breaks given to gaming corporations and resort builders. It will have a little more authentic charm then Vegas, which has none, but it will be yet another crass and glitzy spectacle. Since many of the people who left won't be coming back, a low-wage service-economy based on gambling and tourism will bring some newcomers into town, and the new city we will see will not have much of the history, charm, and mystery of old New Orleans, but the new city will be touted as a "monumental testament to progress," or words to that effect. Sad, really.
---Ryan

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
I have a lot of interest in seeing the reconstruction efforts proceed. Anyone got any opinions on where we might be headed with this?

I agree with the scenario you described above, for some reason though I know it's unavoidable, and in recent years I have found myself more resistant to the style in which they go about this, more so than the actual plan. If I have to live in "that" world, can it at least not be like one giant themepark, or mall? That's all I ask. You mention some sci fi above, when I see the New America I am more reminded of WIlliam Gibson, and the Neuromancer trilogy myself, maybe with a pinch of spice (Dune) for flavour.

Originally posted by RyanC
I'm still betting---no pun intended---that New Orleans re-emerges as a Las Vegas of the south

I couldn't agree more, as a matter of fact I will go so far as to extend it beyond New Orleans, and state that eventually every major American city will be similar to the new vegas/disney type atmosphere.

Anyone who is from N.Y. can tell you that it is a themepark compared to what it used to be. It has in fact become a charicature of itself. Las Vegas was once as seedy if not seedier than N.Y., now it's a "family-oriented" Vegas.

Anyone from California can tell you what has happened to Hollywood. When I lived in Hollywood, half the street lights did not work, hookers were still on Hollywood and Vine, drugs were to be found on EVERY corner, and if you were lucky you might get to spot a celebrity. Now it is like Vegas, or N.Y, a charicature of it's former glory, complete with glitter mixed into the asphalt, so the streets, sparkle, as if paved with gold.

Here in California this has not been limited to hollywood either. Downtown L.A. is building up at a frightening rate. The new disney hall, and various highrise "urban dwelling" developments that have sprung up over the last few years, have truly reshaped the image of L.A. After the proposed downtown reconstruction is finished I would not be surprised if L.A was as unrecognizable as N.Y, Hollywood, and Vegas are now.

The American dream has turned into some weird bastard step child of walt disneyésque architecture/ambiance, and police state a la Orwell. Complete with increased security, surveillance, rental rates, property values, goods, and services, etc, etc....

The more I travel to western cities the more I find that they are all losing their individual flavour, and becoming something completely different, something I can not even fully describe....I am reminded of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the movie), when Johnny depp is in Vegas and describes it as

"This is what the world would look like had hitler won the war!".....

If in fact New Orleans is not lost, which I really think it is, then I can see it emerging as one of these new Gëschaft über Stadt's. There will probably be some type of theme, bourbon street, french quarter motiff or whatever. People from around the globe will flock to see the City that the US rebuilt, bringing with them, their money. After all, tourist economies are great you know?.....for former empires.

[edit on 14-9-2005 by phoenixhasrisin]

Excellent post, Phoenix, one of the best insights into the soulless and dead wasteland that aAmerica has become, with its identical strip malls, gated communities (there's an oxymoron for you), and Disneyland phoniness. I remember the quote from Fear ANd Loathing well, and if Thompson thought Vegas looked like Hitler's world in the late 60s, imagine what he would make of it now. I also agree with your sentiment that a certain amount of seediness gives a city some flavor, and that gentrification is really just a method of pushing the problem around. I live in the inner city and the gentrification efforts in my neighborhood have resulted in bland "upscale" condominiums, retail chain stores, and basically everything looking "good" on the surface, but feeling a lot deader than when the area was more "troubled." Have my property values gone up? Absolutely, but when I bought my house in this neighborhood eight years ago, it was because I wanted nothing to do with yuppie phoniness, and now I am surrounded by it.
---Ryan

There is a plan. It was being worked on just as Katrina hit. It is called

HOLLYWOOD SOUTH

I heard this confirmed on NPR as well. There is no plan to rebuild the ghetto. Instead there is a pie-in-the-sky idea that everyone will be middle class. Well, who will work in Micky D's? Hm.

[

The more I travel to western cities the more I find that they are all losing their individual flavour, and becoming something completely different, something I can not even fully describe....I am reminded of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the movie), when Johnny depp is in Vegas and describes it as

"This is what the world would look like had hitler won the war!".....

San Francisco and Oakland are largely un-disnyfied. So is Santa Fe. Tucson is homely but honest. Reno is still more or less seedy. San Diego still feels authentic.

Phoenix on the other hand is an off-the-charts nightmare of urban sprawl!

And LA, well I mean c'mon!

Really interesting link there about "Hollywood South" --- confirms what many of us were suspecting, more or less, but with a little twist, a new Hollywood rather than a new Vegas---either way a tourist trap in the making. As for your brief comments on Western cities, since I spent about four months road-tripping around the west not long ago---
San Diego is authentic, but basically a military retirement community---nice climate, gorgeous views, but a bit sterile.
LA---I agree with you completely, forget it, total sprawling chaos.
Phoenix---ugly and sprawling everywhere with no plan to contain its growth, and the fact that most of it is so new makes it feel more like a giant suburb than a city. Of all western cities, only Vegas is more godforsaken.
Tucson---I agree, pretty harmless and unpretentious, the last real desert town.
Santa Fe---beautiful and scenic, a little too yuppie-esque for my taste, and damn expensive---but pretty, like I said.
Taos--- about the same as above, only even more scenic beauty .
Las Vegas---Hurricane Katrina, where are you when we need you? Just kidding, but a seriously nauseating place that has lost any semblance of charm it may once have had.
Reno---still kinda seedy, you're right, and a lot nearer to some natural beauty than one would expect in Nevada.
Bay Area---You're right, SF and Oakland are both still more or less themselves, although SF seems much more corporatized than the last time I had been though there about ten years ago.
Okay, way off-topic, sorry, now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
---Ryan

[edit on 15-9-2005 by RyanC]

Originally posted by RyanC
. I remember the quote from Fear ANd Loathing well, and if Thompson thought Vegas looked like Hitler's world in the late 60s, imagine what he would make of it now.

Thanx....

About Dr. Thomspon though, not to be callous...but why do you think he blew his brains out?

Originally posted by opensecret1150

San Francisco and Oakland are largely un-disnyfied. So is Santa Fe. Tucson is homely but honest. Reno is still more or less seedy. San Diego still feels authentic.

I'll give you Oakland, and Reno...but Frisco lives off of the sixties..Haight and Ashbury is a joke now...Embarcadero, Castro district...please.Never been to tuscon,nor Sante Fe, so I can't say. "Blan-Diego"...Well that says it all. No desire to live near a backwards projecting nuclear cooler, maybe that's just me though.
Bechtel admits that the reactor was installed backwards but that's about it.

Phoenix on the other hand is an off-the-charts nightmare of urban sprawl!And LA, well I mean c'mon!

Yeah Phoenix is pretty bad complete with mills super-mall, and smell of spent hops (whatever you describe it as, the city smells weird)..and yeah,
L.A, is L.A. God bless Angelique!

Yeah, sounds like a lovely place to raise children....

Sooner, or later, we will have to come to terms that the city, however revitalized or rebuilt, will still be uninhabitable. Mark my words on this one. We can discuss the topic on this thread thirty years from now.

Hope to see you all here....