Progress For New Orleans

Putting this site together has reminded me of the stuff I was writing in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and how those thoughts have either remained the same or evolved over the past 4 years. This was a letter to Congress that I personally delivered to all of the Senator’s offices (and tried to deliver to the House offices before being kicked out) along with a pair of Mardi Gras beads, in October of 2005. I assume that the House members got the message but I never heard from any of them.

Rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

Why should we help New Orleans?

Because New Orleans is still one of the most strategic cities in the country. Because New Orleans is the port by which the goods for the great mid section of the country go out to the world. Because it is the right thing to do. Because it is the economic engine which drives the economy of almost everything within a 100 miles of it. Because we have 400 miles of devastated coast from Ocean Springs, Mississippi to Orange, Texas and this is one of the largest natural disasters to hit the United States and if the Federal Government can’t or won’t respond then it will be seen as some sign of the United States ineffectiveness in dealing with its own problems. If you can’t do it for love of a great city and region, do it for pride in a great country

Is rebuilding the Gulf Coast something that the Federal Government should be involved in?

If not the U.S. Federal government then who? We are still part of the U.S. We still pay taxes. We live in a place that might be a little more hazardous, doing jobs that other folks might not want to do (like loading ships and refining oil) so that the country can trade with the world and have energy to operate.

One of the basic responsibilities of government is protection and mutual aid. If the Federal Government can’t even participate at that basic level then why be a country at all. If we have to assist other regions in their disasters and not get the same courtesy then why even be part of the U.S? If you weren’t going to help rebuild our city then why did you buy us from the French. The U.S. bought New Orleans and got Iowa (and 10 or so other states) for free. I’d say we were well worth the price and well worth fixing now that we have a bit of trouble.

But isn’t New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just one of those places that humans shouldn’t be living?

This country was built by people who lived in places where it was hard to live. If our forefathers hadn’t done the hard work of living in places that were hard to live in most of us would still be in Europe. There is no place in this country that is completely safe from natural disasters. San Francisco, Los Angeles and the west coast is awaiting an earthquake. No one suggested we write off Florida and return it to the Seminoles after the 4 hurricanes that swept through it last year. Oklahoma and other parts of tornado alleys have small town regularly wiped off the map. Even Nashville, TN, with some of the most benign weather in the country had a tornado hit its downtown a couple years ago.

We have the technology that the original settlers couldn’t have even imagined in protecting the places we live from natural disasters. We can rebuild the levee system, move the pumping stations to the lake for greater perimeter control and keep the city from storm surge flooding. They are doing it in the Netherlands. Are we less committed to one of the most strategic cities in the country than the Dutch are to their cities?

Can you put this in a way I can tell to my constituents that will make them realize how important New Orleans is to the nation?

If a tornado hits a small town and all that is destroyed is the bar then everyone breathes a sigh of relief and while there is some detoxing from the winos, life goes on. However, if that same tornado hits the general store, or the grocery store or the feed store or all three and the grain silo then people are in a world of hurt and everyone tries to figure out what they can do. I am frustrated that folks just think it hit the bar. The place where people go to have a good time and… well, they can go to Vegas instead. No! It hit the grain silo. The place where all those mid-western farmers that ship the grain down on barges to get loaded onto ocean going tankers bound for the rest of the world. It hit the general store. A large port that imported steel and rubber and other materials from around the world for US manufacturing. It hit the grocery store. New Orleans is one of the largest coffee ports in the country and had some of the largest roasting and packaging facilities. Gulfport, MS is one of the largest banana ports in the country. Everyone wants to focus on the French Quarter but there is so much more to the city than that.

Who are you and why are you doing this?

I’m Anthony Favre. Just a guy from New Orleans. Normally I work on Conventions in New Orleans. (Antonin Scalia might not remember me but I just did the sound and lights for the 5th Judicial Conference this spring at the Sheraton in New Orleans), but there aren’t many conventions in town and I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d let Congress know how important it was to get Rebuilding and Recovery money down to the Gulf Coast. I’m 4th Generation New Orleanian in ways that I count, Great Grandpa Ciaccio from Sicily, probably more than 4 in ways I don’t (like my grandfather’s mother was a Brunet, a French Family that has been around the city for centuries). On the Gulf Coast, one side of my dad’s family has been there since the French got off the boat and the other side, being Choctaw and all, was there before that. My dad grew up in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and my cousins were living all over the coast.

What about corruption and incompetence?

You want oversight? I want oversight. I think we have a couple of people in our current governor and mayor who aren’t out to enrich themselves and are working as hard as they can to make it right. Also, don’t you think we learned a powerful lesson with this storm that the state of our local government matters? Don’t you think we will be watching out for what officials do at all levels of government? But, if it makes you feel better to have someone trustworthy and respected doing the auditing of the funds, then it’s alright with me.

But your representatives put in things like alligator farms in their bill. What about that?

At least we didn’t ask for something really silly like a snow shoe repair facility or a ski lift. Yeah, it’s a little extreme but, I know it seems exotic but an alligator farm in Louisiana is something that people actually do for a living. And everyone knows that if you don’t ask for something in Congress you will not get it. Don’t be irritated at us for asking. And if this seems a little excessive to you, don’t fund it. We still have many, many other things that were destroyed in our 400 miles of storm ravaged coast.

Oh, and your (governor, mayor, paper) said bad things about our (FEMA director, admiral, president) and we are irritated…

People get frustrated when they are in a desperate, life and death, situation. They say things they probably shouldn’t. It would be extremely petty to hold that against an entire region.

What are you gonna do if we don’t help you out?

We are going to do what we can. We will try to fix our houses and move on with our lives. But it will be tough. And without the money to fix the flood protection and the coastal erosion it is going to be tougher still to get anyone interested in helping us rebuild.

How do we pay for this?

A couple of years ago, back when there was a surplus, Congress passed a bill that provided tax cuts to people getting dividends and capital gains. Well, now that a lot of things are going on the National Credit Card, it might be time to look again and see if that was such a good idea

What kind of things do you think would help?

A Category 5 levee system built in 5 years. The extension of Interstate 49 speeded up to help with evacuations. Some help with paying the NOPD and other police forces in the region. Coastal erosion help.

Anything else you want to tell us?

Yes.. Please hurry. The entire tax base of Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquamines Parish, as well as Hancock County, Mississippi has been destroyed. These folks can’t meet payroll for essential public services. We need some short term help and long term rebuilding, and we need to start this process as soon as we can.

Also.. it’s my home and I love it. Don’t make me move from my home. I might be really irritated and end up in your district.

We could have used this whole experience to fundamentally remake the city into one that provides opportunity for its citizens and perhaps create a new prosperous city. We could have used this to create a new New Orleans based upon economic opportunity but instead we are continuing to pursue the same methods that have led to our stagnation and decline.

Economic development sections put low wage tourism first and follows it with the dubious concept of the “cultural economy”. The rest of the chapter seems to be focused almost exclusively on the ‘public private” partnership. It almost ignores our place in the global economy and the benefits that has brought us over the course of our existence.

And all of this is premised upon a dubious new theory that contradicts millennia of observation on the growth and prosperity of cities. The planners brought to the table the idea that a diverse and cosmopolitan population will drive economic development instead of what has actually been the case since the dawn of civilization, that economic development will bring a diverse and cosmopolitan population. We didn’t get built on this swamp because our forefathers came for the culture, they were the culture, they came for the economic opportunity and that’s how real, vibrant cities maintain themselves.  We can’t pretend we can pay people to BE the culture, we have to recognize that we have a culture because people got paid doing other, more productive things.

The one thing this master plan desperately needed to do was to sweep away the 70s CZO that zoned our neighborhood businesses out of existence. The empty storefronts that dot our city are the legacy of a previous plan, more suited to Slidell, that painted on zoning with a paint roller rather than recognizing the diverse land-use mosaic that is our streetscape. This plan pays lip service to opening up these locations to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of the city but it should be boldly declaring that these storefronts can be a force in our economic renaissance.

But of course they are being cautious, lest they upset the forces of NO, that are holding this city back economically because it may, possibly, make their lives the slightest bit less comfortable or not cater exclusively to their needs. Well, we have a whole passel of city ordinances to deal with any disturbances and better we use them than foreswearing commercial uses and leaving our city filled with vacant buildings.

In a city that is going broke, the Planning Commission gave themselves another 14 or so district planners. Instead of eliminating the need to “kiss rings”, the so-called Citizen Participation Plan adds another layer of rings to kiss as they empower the most obstructionist elements of our city to stand in the way of new development or request kickbacks from projects.

We have already seen this play out as a neighborhood association already requested a cut of the operating funds of the ill-conceived “Re-inventing the crescent”. Not only unhappy with getting a park that will further erode New Orleans’ raison d’etre they wanted to be paid. And this is a public project. How many developers looking to bring jobs and sales tax revenue will be similarly held up?

The plan is overly protective of the housing for 650,000 plus people that we don’t need and hostile towards the commercial property that we desperately need for the jobs and the sales tax revenue they produce. It has removed most commercial zoning west of the industrial canal unless it is adjacent to a housing project.

There seems to be notion in this town that we can complain about section 8 housing and property taxes and in the same breath stop the businesses that bring jobs and sales tax revenue as if these two aren’t linked. That we can call for more police and better schools without understanding how more and better employment opportunities help both these situations.

At a time when we are struggling to maintain and grow our population we should be making it EASIER for people to rebuild and businesses to open. But instead of a growth plan, this thing focuses on a preservation plan.  But here is the bottom line, without a robust economy there are no resources to preserve anything and without a prosperous population there is no reason to preserve anything.

Throughout the process there have been calls for “input” but when it comes to the actual plan it seems to stick pretty closely to the desire of special interest groups with their obstructionist agenda. So much so, that the Fairgrounds Racetrack isn’t mapped to be commercial, like it should be, but is mapped for doubles, like we need

yet more housing without jobs.

Additionally, have we told the people of Lakeview that a new massive interstate interchange is coming to their

neighborhood or the people of New Orleans East that we don’t really care if they can get to work downtown or the people of the Treme that Claiborne is probably going to be 8 lanes of traffic at highway speeds, if we keep the destruction of I-10 in the plan. The only thing that works in the plan is the new hospitals, which it gives rather tepid support to.

My wish? Send it back to the City Planning Commission with the notation to make the entire plan advisory only. Take the destruction of the I-10 out of the plan. Open up the “Citizens Participation” Groups to all comers and not just members of unelected neighborhood associations. Short of going back to the drawing board to build a plan that embraces progress and puts economic development first, without the fantasy that either preservation or culture is economic development, a plan that opens up the city for development and redevelopment rather than giving into the forces of NO and their desire to hold the city back. We needed to start with the idea that everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed,

rather than the other way around. We need to find ways to say YES. It is the only way for New Orleans to survive and thrive.  Thank you.

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, the levee failures and the subsequent flooding there was lots of talk amoungst the uneducated about abandoning New Orleans and not rebuilding. Unfortunately for the city one of these fools was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert.

Smarter people prevailed, but the persistent notion of not rebuilding found its way into conversations that continued into 2006. The Bring New Orleans Back Committee (BNOB) in conjunction with the Urban Land Institute floated this idea and it proved to be some of the most contentious meetings in the post-Katrina landscape. 2006 was simply too early to discuss the viability of neighborhoods.  This conversation needs to happen now, but that is a whole ‘nother topic.

I feel that the infamous “Green Dot” debate stalled the impetus towards recovery in many of our neighborhoods. And it also gave rise to the premise of New Orleans as a “boutique city”.

Green Dots over our neighborhoods

The “Boutique City” was the idea that New Orleans was going to have fewer people and be happy about it. That those fewer people would be richer, probably, and therefore, theoretically shop at boutiques.

The concept of the “boutique city” and the fight against the concept, probably led in part to Ray Nagin’s infamous and divisive  “Chocolate City” remarks. Ironic, since it was his BNOB committee that pushed the concept forward and gave it its audience.

Well, the “boutique city” is a mistake.

It ignores the geographic strength of our location and exchanges it for the concept that we can live on our “charm”.  It is a concept that says not only will New Orleans not work to it’s potential but will deliberately short circuit progress to ensure that it is unable to thrive.

It is a failed vision, and unfortunately it is something we have been heading towards with each development that puts parks over productivity, quaintness over commerce, preservation over progress.

We should aim for a city that has a million hard working people all with good jobs. A city that attracts people on the basis of economic opportunity and holds onto its college graduates. A city that uses it’s geographic advantage astride the Mississippi River to create the growth necessary to sustain the city and its institutions.

Cause here’s the story. The investments necessary to protect New Orleans from the hazards of water are so costly that they will only be feasible if there are good financial reasons to do it. Being a major port with a population that has great jobs that is a vital player in the national and global economy is a good financial reason. Spending that money to protect a bunch of old buildings and unproductive folks either living on government assistance or on the money of their great-grandfather’s labor, is not a good financial reason.

Put simply: The “Boutique City”, in addition to being an enourmous waste of our city’s potential, will surely fail to be able to protect itself because the resources will not be allocated simply because we are striving to make ourselves “quaint” and “charming”.

The “Boutique City” pretty much guarantees we end up the next Atlantis. Growth and demonstrated financial strength and a critical and vital population means that we can live on perpetually.

This is just a set, in concise form, of many of the themes, backgrounds, motifs and issues that are going to be central to this forum going forward. I expect that these will change over the course of writing in more detail. And who knows, my mind may change on some of these in the future. But now, just now, these are some of the more important points I’ll be working on with posts here.

- The River. The reason New Orleans is here, the reason our city was built here, and the reason we are still important to the rest of the country is due, primarily, to the river. Forget this and you will suffer for it.

- International Trade. We built a lot of things and grew when trade was central to our life in New Orleans. We began to ignore it and we began our decline.

- Tradition may or may not be a problem. Insularity almost always is.

- Romanticizing New Orleans and thinking that it is so “unique” that it doesn’t need to participate in the U.S. or world economy is one of the most damaging things you can do to the city. The people of New Orleans make it unique and if the people can’t sustain themselves then New Orleans dies as they leave for economic opportunity elsewhere.

- If you think national retail chains and large scale business are somehow incompatible with New Orleans, you haven’t been here long enough.

- Those who complain that they don’t want New Orleans to be like “Houston or Atlanta”  don’t seem to realize 1) Both those cities started out trying to be like New Orleans (in terms of economic primacy) and 2) that a lack of opportunity for our citizens will have them moving to places like Houston or Atlanta.

- Historic preservation is fine in small doses and when completely voluntary. When it becomes compulsory and preservationists become strident it becomes stifling.

- The combination of strident preservationists and an insular ruling class combine to be like a bad jealous lover for the city of New Orleans. They don’t want you to change and they don’t want you to meet anyone new.

- I will struggle to remember that you can get into a lot of trouble speaking in metaphors and similes in New Orleans.

- Neighborhood Organizations can be a double edged sword in a community, providing a method for disseminating crucial information and being a catalyst for positive neighborhood projects but oftentimes being resistant to change, a self appointed cadre of the NIMBY-minded with a reflexive NO towards most new development.

- Basic code enforcement, or rather the lack of it, is impacting economic development.

- In New Orleans, oftentimes, something is restricted so that you can have the privilege of paying to do it or have it done. More regulations generally just mean more opportunity for corruption.

- Almost every new development that has been built in the city in the past 50 years has had a positive impact on the areas around them. In the cases where you think they haven’t you need to perhaps look closer at what is causing the decline.

- Concentrating poverty has failed miserably.

- And to paraphrase Ernie K-Doe. “When you got your money in your pocket, that’s your money.”  That pretty well underscores how important individual economic opportunity is and why we should do the things we need to do to make sure that we build a prosperous city.

So… these are it… mostly, in a couple of bullet points what we will be talking about here.