We need to rebuild New Orleans

I want to rebuild you New Orleans.  I want to take a week off from my job and drive thirty hours to sleep on the floor and work twelve-hour days.  I'll pay my own way - I don't have much but I'll find the money.  I need to show you that America isn't the country it seems to be.  I need to recommit to the American Dream.

Ideally, we would have a President who could act like a real leader, and pull the country together to rebuild N.O., but thanks to the internet, we can make it happen ourselves.  Using a Meetup-style website, we can organize groups from all over the country to travel to N.O.  The groups can be location-based, interest based, or any other affinity people could come up with.  The groups would self-organize, donating their time, labor, and money to make the trip happen.  Ideally, we could rely on the government to coordinate logistics for housing and distribution of labor, but we may have to rely on the non-profits in the region.

Anyone who has ever worked on a Habitat for Humanity house knows how close you get to someone after working and living with them for a week.  They also know how close you get to the people you are helping.  This is what we desperately need right now in America.  We need to build unity between Americans again.  Red Stater's and Blue Stater's realizing that we have more in common then we have different.  People getting back to what really matters - taking care of each other.  We need to rebuild New Orleans as a nation.  We need to make New Orleans Americas City.  

It's not a great leap to say that other things, like racial and economic equality, are just as important to rebuilding N.O. as the physical labor, and we will have to work though them as we go - but how would you rebuild a family's home and not make sure they could  see a doctor or go to a good school?  How would you make a personal commitment to a family, and not politically support their needs.  The destruction of N.O. has made it clear that there is a people's addenda, regardless of what goes on in Washington.  

To risk sounding overly poetic, this could be our American pilgrimage.  We can rebuild New Orleans and make the country a community again.  We can respond to the disaster in a way we can be proud of, and I don't know about you, but I desperately want to be proud of America again.

•  A thousand minds are better then one...

  Let's put out thinking caps on.

  by Kicking and Screaming on Sun Sep 18, 2005 at 07:07:51 AM PDT

•  How about raising it

  Unfortunately, it's not as if New Orleans and Mississippi's coast have now had their quota of hurricane misfortune.

  Global warming indicates that hurricanes are likely to become more frequent and stronger.  Katrina might not be that unusual, 10 or 20 years from now.

  I admire the spirit behind your post, yet it ought to be wedded to some clear-eyed pragmatism.  I question whether New Orleans should be rebuilt as-is.  The thing about a bowl-shaped city and the properties of water: the bowl is only as strong as its weakest point, and all that water wants to go wherever gravity will let it.

  Maybe now is the time to talk seriously about raising up the city to a uniform 5-10 feet above sea level.  

  by Torta on Sun Sep 18, 2005 at 07:14:39 AM PDT

•  It will take years to rebuild New Orleans

  and its residents must go on with their lives.

  Assistance must be structured so those who wish to return will be able to do so.

  Assistance must also be provided so people can live a normal life in the interim.

  While New Orleans can probably be rebuilt, many of its suburbs may have to be bulldozed and abandoned.

  The individual houses should probably be built to more storm resistant designs.

  There are problems with:
  

  1. floors that are too close to or below sea level
     
  2. sewers below sea level
     
  3. ground that needs to be tested for pollution and made safe
     
  4. ruined structures that need to be removed
     
  5. due process because people are entitled to have access to the legal system
     
  6. old structures that should be selected for restoration
     
  7. brick buildings such as schools that can take months to dry out properly before restoration can begin
     
  8. levees that need to be strengthened to withstand a category five storm
     
  9. long standing problems with poverty as poor families will need more money to pay higher property taxes and insurance on their new and more valuable dwellings
     

   

  by SingleVoter on Sun Sep 18, 2005 at 08:01:46 AM PDT

  •  I think this really needs to be

    thought throug before we all jump on the 'rebuild NOLA' bandwagon. I want to see some numbers on the feasibility of all this. Is it worth the money? Will it just get wiped out again by another hurricane? If we rebuilt it very hurricane-proof, will that cost far more than it's really worth. Shouldn't we think twice about rebuilding some areas that are below sea-level and very prone to future hurricane damage? etc.

    I have no doubt that NOLA will begin functioning once again as a port. It's location at the mouth of the mighty Mississip makes it indispensible. And I'm very grateful that the most historical parts of the city have survived more or less intact, i.e. the French Quarter. But I have my doubts about the rest of the city, especially the newer parts that were built in low-level areas at the cost of lost wetlands.

    And then the question arises of how exactly the rebuilding effort will be organized. Will it be a highly Bushized, cronyist effort that will turn the destroyed parts of NOLA into strip-mall condo hell? Or will it be managed intelligently with a view toward making an even better NOLA? Will it be left to the invisible hand of the marketplace, whereby those who lost their homes will get jacked and wealthy developers will swoop in like so many carpet-baggers and turn it into ... strip-mall condo hell?

    I need to hear way more before I can make up my mind what I think about this. And I don't really think there's a hurry. More effort should be focused on helping the homeless relocate to other places for lest cost than a massive and immediate rebuilding effort. Needless to say I have ZERO confidance that anything good will happen while Bush is president, no matter how much money he says he will fling at it. I can't help but think maybe the best thing to do is rebuild very little until at least 2009, if you know what I mean.

    by Warren Terrer on Sun Sep 18, 2005 at 09:11:29 AM PDT

•  I think the administration is already planning

  to rebuild it, but not for the poor and people who lived there before..Ben Sargent says it best..

  

  by Demfem on Sun Sep 18, 2005 at 08:50:31 AM PDT