So you thought urban renewal and the destruction of neighborhoods and tearing down of historic buildings was a thing of the past. Think again: Not in New Orleans. CNN reports:
Protests against a City Council plan to tear down low-income New
Orleans housing turned ugly Thursday, with police using pepper spray
and stun guns to clear a crowd angry they weren’t allowed into City
Hall for the vote. The City
Council voted unanimously to greenlight the demolition of the city’s
four largest public housing developments, saying they are too damaged
by Hurricane Katrina to allow residents back into them. But many
in New Orleans, including former residents of the developments, say
they fear the local and federal governments will not guarantee
similarly affordable housing be built in their place — calling the
demolition an effort to move poor people out of the city. At
about 11 a.m., several protesters were dragged out of council chambers
after scuffles broke out among people who packed the room, and members
of the crowd booed council members and shouted insults at them. About 30 minutes later, hundreds more protesters angry that they
weren’t allowed into the meeting began rattling an iron gate outside
City Hall.
New York Times architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff writes:
[I]t is the government’s tabula rasa approach that
evokes the most brutal postwar urban-renewal strategies. Neighborhood
history is deemed irrelevant; the vague notion of a “fresh start” is
invoked to justify erasing entire communities. This mentality
also threatens other public buildings in New Orleans that can be
considered 20th-century landmarks. If the government gets its way, a
rich architectural legacy will be supplanted by private, mixed-income
developments with pitched roofs and wood-frame construction, an ersatz
vision of small-town America. That this could happen in a city that
still largely lies in ruins is both sad and grotesque. …In an eerie echo of the slum clearance projects of the 1960s,
government officials are once again denying that these projects and
communities can be salvaged through a human, incremental approach to
planning. For them, only demolition will do. … If
the urban renewal projects of the 1960s replaced decaying historic
neighborhoods with vast warehouses for the poor, HUD’s vision would
yield saccharine, suburban-style houses. And the situation is likely to
get worse. The government has identified some other historically
important public buildings for demolition as part of its push for
privatization. Charity Hospital, an Art Deco structure built downtown
in the late 1930s, was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina, and its fate
is uncertain. … The Thomas Lafon Elementary School, a sleek
Modernist structure from the 1950s, is destined for the wrecking ball.
And there has been talk of tearing down the Andrew J. Bell Junior High
School, an elegant French neo-Gothic building completed in the late
19th century.Blow after blow, in the name of progress. Cast as
the city’s saviors, architects are being used to compound one of the
greatest crimes in American urban planning.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:37 am
What a sad state of affairs. While the US government spends billions on a war it can’t win in Iraq, New Orleans crumbles.
December 21st, 2007 at 8:39 am
Clearly you don’t (and never have) lived in New Orleans. The low-income-housing projects that are being torn town certainly don’t qualify as “historic buildings.” Though I agree there is much to be said about debating the loss of a neighborhood’s idenity during disaster recovery, only somone completely unfamiliar with New Orleans would want to save either the building or the identify of these housing projects.
These projects were overdue for demolition before Hurricane Katrina. They were an emmbarrasing ghetto of substandard housing designed merely to contain the poorest of our society.
What needs to happen here? These buildings need to be blown apart and made into an artifical reef (thus ensuring at least some creature will get adequate housing from the misused bricks and cement). And next, new MIXED income housing needs to be built in a manner that respects New Orleans’s architectural heritage and community spirit. Further more green space and guaranteed mixed commercial/residential zoned areas are an absolute necessity.
I know your post was well intended – but your way off the mark. And whatever neighborhood the NYT is referencing when it talks about saving architectural history, I can assure you, isn’t these housing projects. They were (by far) the ugliest, most poorly planned, most racist, and most violent area of the city.
Protest the plans to rebuild, or the fear that the government won’t support low-income housing, or the graft associated with rebuilding contracts. But don’t shed a tear over the demolition of the worst housing projects you were likely to find in America.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Bradley – Thanks for the comment, but next time read more closely. First, the Times article clearly points out that while most of the projects are abysmal and of little architectural value, included in the demolition plan are other buildings of real significance. Second, and to my mind more important is the Moses-like disregard of human beings – the arrogance of the process. Human beings do not storm council chambers under usual conditions. The people who live in these buildings and scared and fed up. The question I always ask is: What if it were your home? How would you feel if it were to be taken away and demolished? What kind of process would make you feel best? How would you like it handled?
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:08 am
Actually, I would expect some groups of people from New Orleans to storm council chambers to protest any vote dealing with any demolition. An interesting question is: How is New Orleans different from Mississippi, which was impacted much more than New Orleans, or even some areas of Texas and Florida?
Though I repaired my home, it flooded and I was without any real insurance. But your question is what process I would like to see, how I would feel, and how would I want it handled. Interestingly, I would have been one of those people who would have signed a right of entry for FEMA demolition if my home was damaged beyond affordable repair. That is what most people who owned their homes did.
The issue, here, is with the people who don’t own a home. What solution do many of the people who stormed the council chambers seek? Many, I believe, blame the State and Federal government for the loss of their home. And they want the government to come in, build them a house (or apartment, etc), give them money for their lost possessions, turn over the keys, and leave. Of course, I’m not even addressing the debate over building the right kind of home, or how it will change the culture of a neighborhood.
Essentially, they want to be placed in the same situation or better to what they were before the storm. And I’m not sure that is even possible. I’m not sure what they want is appropriate or realistic.
Should the government establish that policy? And if so, what about Mississippi, Florida, Texas, the Carolinas and other hurricane-prone states? What about San Francisco and the unavoidable massive destruction that will (one day) come? Governments must protect the individuals – but that protection bears a costs with limits, else society as a whole suffers too greatly.
The sad truth is that next August, which will be 3 years after Katrina, New Orleans will be largely the same as it’s been for the last 2 years. Meanwhile Mississippi with be much farther along toward recovery. Why? It’s the same Federal Government. It is a State Government problem? Is it a local government problem? Is it something else?
The culture of New Orleans is unique – the city is one of this country’s true gems. But I have to wonder, is part of what makes New Orleans so unique also part of the reason they can’t seem to move forward in the recovery process? Probably. This is an area that’s largely incapable of trusting government – even local government. I fear that any solution the government can manage will be insufficient to avoid large protests or even violence.
Meanwhile, real recovery becomes ever more evasive. And at some point, people on the outside will start to ask: Why wasn’t New Orleans able to recover, when other areas can?
In the end, how would I want to be treated? As fairly as the government can treat me.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 am
The big problem with these tear downs is clear where will these people live when there homes are destroyed? I think it would be one thing if first they built new affordable housing then slowly demolished and replaced the damaged buildings. But to knock them down while some many homes are already destroyed seems wrong.