All blowed up now

The Iberville demolition is now underway.

Demolition of the Iberville housing complex, the city’s last traditional public housing project still standing, will begin today. The 72-year old development is being razed as part of a multimillion-dollar plan that city officials say is necessary to revitalize the Treme neighborhood, Canal Street and the Central Business District.

Fifty-nine of the 75 Iberville buildings will be demolished. The Housing Authority of New Orleans plans to preserve and renovate the remaining 16 historic buildings, which were constructed in the 1930s and opened in 1941.

The demolition is part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhood Initiative, HUD’s latest program aimed at transforming distressed urban areas and public housing into mixed-income neighborhoods with links to schools, transportation and jobs.

Roughly translated: "Mixed-income neighborhoods" = "Not as many poors can live here anymore"

Which is just as well since  "links to schools" doesn't really happen as charters constantly change and shuffle around to different buildings every year.  Parents and students are forced to adjust their schedules.

And then the  "transportation" part in this case means a new streetcar on Rampart St. which will move slowly on purpose so as to better accommodate tourism related development. 

And I guess you could torture that out into meaning it's a link to "jobs" But what we're really going for in that department is importing the higher-paying stuff (only with the highly paid already attached) via  "Transactional Activism."

So taken as a whole this program  pretty much does what is says it will do. Only it transforms the "distressed urban area" by moving the "distressed" out of the way.