The stop the demolition movement seems to be much more about forcing government to somehow address the housing crisis BEFORE going ahead with demolition plans, given that many argue these projects could be viable short-term emergency housing options.
There is no reason there can't be compromise on this issue. Why not increase aid vouchers to give people a better chance of finding market apartments? Why not quickly remodel one or two of the project complexes and while taking down the others? Why not force developers and HANO to have a redevelopment contract in place before beginning demolition so that we can guarantee that these land tracts will not sit empty (like Magnolia)? Why not begin a program in which salvageable homes slated for demolition are distributed to working families so that our city is not dismantled into empty lots? I mean have you read what Karen Gadbois has been saying?
And I think this is the point. The fight against these demolitions isn't really about pushing people back into "housing gulags" as some have charged. But it is about pushing back against a government agency that is clearly acting in bad faith. Otherwise E's series of "Why not"s in the above quote would not be met with such silence. Public housing obviously needs to be improved. What we are being sold here, however, is not an improvement so much as it is an abandonment. Whatever replaces these buildings is not going to come close to serving the needs of as many people as the public housing system has served in the past... however inadequately.
And serving fewer people is clearly the purpose of this policy just as it is with nearly every aspect of planning the "New" NOLA. All over town institutions are "re-inventing" themselves with an eye toward smaller and less centralized services that cannot and will not meet the needs of a living, growing city. This is the case with health care, with public education, public transit...etc. All the way down the line hours and access are being cut in accordance with strategic plans which normally have at least two things in common:
1) They are drawn up by outside consulting firms with little or no regard for the specific character and needs of the City of New Orleans.
2) They often state out-loud that the plan is to serve the "smaller" population.
With regard to characteristic 1, I've spent enough time complaining about Ed Blakely, but he is actually merely an exemplar of the kind of consultantocracy we've been dealing with.
The fundamental problem here is New Orleans is not being recovered and rebuilt by people who live in and know the city. Instead, New Orleans is being "reimagined" by people who have only imaginary ideas about what was here in the first place and no stake in what will be here in the future. As a result, the bulk of city services are being planned to serve an imaginary city.
Prior to the flood, New Orleans was an ailing post-industrial city increasingly reliant on the insufficient tourism industry to provide a faint echo of a once healthier, more diverse economy. Back then the tourists were annoying. They came and partied and peed on our houses and then went home and told ignorant stories about a place about which they had no real clue. Who knew that one day the tourists would be re-designing the same neighborhoods they never bothered to visit or understand before?
It should surprise no one, then, that when you let tourists plan your city, what you end up with is a city for tourists. Tourists don't need as many buses in service but they sure do like that streetcar... although they really don't need it to run 24 hours anymore. Tourists don't need to send their kids to school here but they don't mind seeing ours used as guinea pigs in a grand privatization experiment. Tourists don't need affordable housing in New Orleans... but...yes, often they are interested in purchasing a condo here. Listening to a recent recitation of a vision for the future of the library system, I was struck by the repeated emphasis on the library's role in making an impression on visitors as opposed to... you know... serving the population. It's a small thing but perfectly in line with the larger illness afoot.
Characteristic 2 of the "reimagined" New Orleans is the troubling emphasis on the smaller" population. If you consciously plan to serve a smaller population, aren't you, in fact, ensuring that your population remains small? Perhaps a scaling back might be in order if we were grappling with a permanent out-migration over time. But I thought the point of all this was to rebuild a city destroyed by a flood.
Planning a smaller city, in this case, is tantamount to forcing people into exile. It is purposefully working to complete the demolition. Is this really what we want? A small city? How does this strategy square with the simultaneous bellyaching over departing businesses? How does it square with the ongoing argument in favor of maintaining two professional sports franchises?
Yesterday the T-P reported that $294 million has just been designated by the LRA to flow into the as yet dormant plans for building the "New" New Orleans. Will this money buy us a growing and vibrant city? Or will it be spent erecting a quiet, hollow, "smaller" tourist attraction imagined and designed with a tourist's eye for what ought to be important to us?
Update: Please read G-Bitch's take on the tearing down of "Those Buildings"
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