Progress For New Orleans

Putting the NEW back in New Orleans

Browsing Posts tagged national retail chains

Dear New New Orleans Resident,

We need to talk.

I am often treated by folks who just moved here about how New Orleans is so unique. I get to hear all about how New Orleans is the most European or the most Caribbean city. Some folks from elsewhere in America will exclaim to me, breathlessly, that “it’s not like being in America at all.”

But see, here’s the thing. It is like being in America. Our America. Our America is like most of the country in many ways and different in many ways. But this is the thing, it is still our America. Of course we have a lot of people who think there is some sort of homogeneous “American” experience, but of course that is a very narrow appreciation of the country and it’s basic diversity. The farm life in Kansas is very different than life in a New York City borough. There is a world of difference between the daily experience of someone in the Florida Panhandle and  streets of Chicago.  There are many Americas in this country. And even if there are things that are common to most of us it is very superficial to look at this as one culture.

And so we need to talk to you  about our America because there are things you need to know.

The big differences are the easiest. Mardi Gras is a given but everyone in New Orleans has their own Mardi Gras. It might be old line krewe, or masking Indian, or truck float riding, or French Quarter rambling, or escaping to the ski slopes. Every family has at least one local culinary specialty that they take some sort of pride in: red beans and rice, crawfish boil, gumbo, jambalaya, etouffee. In addition to that they have one family food specialty that reflects their own personal history; lasagna or meatballs, stuffed cabbage, mole.

We are not hung up on drinking. We are gamblers, as you would expect folks who lived in such a precarious place would be. We like our bargains. Before the collapse of our retail sector we shopped at both local and national chains. We have things that we will only buy from one specific store but for most purchases the bargain trumps any notions of loyalty.

We have watched for a long time the decline of our city as places like Houston took our jobs and Atlanta took our people. We recognize the folks in Metairie and St. Bernard and on the Westbank as our folks, even if we wonder why anyone would move to the country, by which we mean, the Northshore.

We are social people. As evidenced by the story a fire chief in Maryland who worked after the storm told me about people he came to rescue inviting him in for a drink.

But still, this is our America. It may have been different than the America you grew up in but it is still America. And as it is America, it still has all the need for things that the rest of America needs: good jobs, a stable population that can support themselves economically, a desire to progress and grow so that their people can maintain themselves. Well, the basic things that every thriving city all around the world needs.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that New Orleans is so “unique” that we can afford to ignore the basics of modern life, to do so suggests that it’s best days are in the past and it has no future outside that of a museum and a playground. New Orleans is better than that.

Our America depends on being able to grow and have a future.

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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.

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