Monday 12 April 2010

Saturday 10th April – Outside the French District




Today was the first time I got outside of the prosperous central areas and actually saw the legacy of destruction that Katrina brought in 2005. I had signed up for an orientation bus tour that took us all the way round the city visiting a lot of different neighbourhoods and areas that were badly hit by floods which were the main disaster brought by Katrina.

We did a loop around the city, passing Treme, Fauberg Marigny and Bywater, and then across the industrial canal and into the Lower Ninth which suffered some of the worst flooding during Katrina, and also happened to be where some of the poorest people lived. Much of the area today has reverted back to nature with acres of vacant plots lining the avenues, interspersed by some remaining flood damaged houses which still retain the Katrina graffiti which is quite haunting.

In the wake of Katrina, emergency response crews tagged thousands of houses with a spray painted X to tell others that it had been searched. At the top of the X the crew wrote the day of arrival. On the right side the crew wrote the number of occupants and their condition. A “0” meant crews found no one, a “2” meant they found two alive and a “2D” meant they found 2 dead.








One of the biggest draws to the lower ninth is the emergence of the new sustainable homes being constructed by charitable organisations such as “Make it Right”. Make it Right are in the process of building 150 affordable, sustainable and architect designed homes in the Lower Ninth and are probably most famous for their association with Brad Pitt who fronts the organisation. News is spreading of this green building agenda and there was an article about it on the front page of USA today on my first day here. The houses are haphazardly arranged amongst vacant plots and are modern in style, most of them built above raised voids to allow for future flooding. Most sport solar panels, whilst all of them have escape hatches in the roof to avoid residents having to break their way through as was the case during Katrina.

We looped through the St Barnard district, also badly hit by flooding and out to the east which gives an idea of the swamp land New Orleans is founded on. Then back through the city to the Lake Area, a more prosperous neighbourhood that was subject to flooding after the drainage canals breached. This gave us a good idea about the New Orleans drainage system, with much of the water directed into culverted canals flowing above the surrounding buildings. We were shown the 17th Street Canal breach which caused a lot of the flooding of this part of New Orleans. Apparently the concrete chanel simple couldn’t withstand the pressure of the water that led to it bursting.

A noticeable thing about this area was that although a lot of empty buildings remained, there were also a lot of restored buildings demonstrating an increase in prosperity compared to the Lower Ninth. There were also less vacant plots, perhaps demonstrating the better building quality in this area than the buildings in the poorer areas out east.

Although there wasn’t a full programme of conference events on Saturday, I came back to the Morial Center and sat in on a session on European Deltas which gave an interesting insight into river delta development in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and included an appearance from Steve Quartermain of CLG, talking about English flood issues (although not strictly in delta areas).

In the evening I got to meet up with some friendly planners based in the US. Firstly Shana Johnson who was introduced to me as a buddy for the conference. After a walk round the French Quarter and some gumbo, we met some AECOM colleagues from San Francisco and went and enjoyed a whole load of different music, on street an in bars. The highlight being a stand off between two Dixie bands on either side of Frenchman street (with some aggressive tuba playing), and a band called Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes in the Blue Nile Club. This is by far one of the funnest places i’ve been. The night finished with some coffee and beignets.

Found out a little later there had been a triple shooting on Royal/Canal Street junction where we’d been shortly before. Whilst Nola is fun, its still pretty gritty.

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