"I screwed up"

This morning's T-P has a good piece on the from-the-ground-up recovery planning going on through many of New Orleans's neighborhood associations. Be sure and capture the synergy and pick up this week's Gambit as well. The cover story by Broadmoor resident David Winkler-Schmit takes a look at that community's ongoing fight against the ominous green circles. In the article (not yet available online.. will link it as soon as it's up) Winkler-Schmit contacts the planner responsible for the "Parks and Open Space Plan" portion of the BNOB report and asks him to explain the reasoning behind the location of the proposed green spaces. The answer he gets is, to say the least, interesting.

"I screwed up," Beckman says. "I should have labeled the map more clearly. The dashed circles (the big green spaces) indicate general areas where neighborhood groups might want to see a park."

In other words the locations of the BNOB commission's proposed "green spaces" may as well have been determined by blindfolded planners hurling gobs of green mold at a map of the city. Meanwhile whole neighborhoods are (understandably) interpreting this to mean that they are not welcome back in their homes. It's encouraging to see that, in Broadmoor at least, folks aren't buying it. One comes away from both of these articles a bit more optimistic that the future of the city's neighborhoods can be determined by its residents rather than by outside planners and consultants.

Update: Online edition available now.