Pumping New Orleans

[Ed Miller]

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Ed,

How many people do you think will never return to NO?

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It's a total guess, but maybe 100,000. The people who don't come back will mostly be poor. For instance, I expect a lot of the people who lived in the projects to stay in their new homes. For many of them, life will likely be better in Texas or Florida than it was for them in New Orleans.

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I'm thinking that in the future, the NO Mardi Gras and the French Quarter may just be a Disneyfied reproduction of how it used to be, and that the city itself may be a shadow of its former self.

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I truly doubt that. New Orleanians have a fire for their city that I haven't even remotely seen in any other city in the world. This is a city filled with people who make $20,000 a year and yet spend $3,000 or more each year on their Mardi Gras costumes. (Now perhaps you understand one reason why the city is so poor, but that's another issue.)

So many of the people literally live their lives for the food, music, parties, and parades, and they feel totally lost outside New Orleans. The day they start letting people back in, there will be 1,000 coming home parties held all across the city, and the New Orleans culture will pick right back up.

Unfortunately, I do fear a "This reconstruction was sponsored by Walmart" effect to some extent. The beautifully delapidated housing (my mom called it the "vernacular architecture") of the working and middle-class neighborhoods will be lost. Unless you've been to the city and seen neighborhood after neighborhood of these houses, you really won't know what I'm talking about, but the look of these houses that are now completely submerged is very characteristically New Orleans. I'm afraid they will be replaced by Las Vegas-style boxes. Oh well.

In any case, the city will lose significant population, but the core of people who could imagine living nowhere but New Orleans will be back to restore the culture. The tourists will follow.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

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Unfortunately, I do fear a "This reconstruction was sponsored by Walmart" effect to some extent. The beautifully delapidated housing (my mom called it the "vernacular architecture") of the working and middle-class neighborhoods will be lost. Unless you've been to the city and seen neighborhood after neighborhood of these houses, you really won't know what I'm talking about, but the look of these houses that are now completely submerged is very characteristically New Orleans. I'm afraid they will be replaced by Las Vegas-style boxes. Oh well.

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This is a real pity. The city is going to lose a lot of its feel.

[Ed Miller]

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My point is they shouldn't fight nature. The fact is NO was under sea level to begin with and they should accept that. The French Quarter was the only part of NO that was above sea level in the first place. As the city grew, new constructions were built around it and it just so happened that they were under sea level. There were no well made plans to do this. It just happened fortuitiously one building and one house at a time.

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This is not a very accurate history of the city of New Orleans. There were Indian settlements all around the area before the French arrived in 1699. And by 1750 there were Creole plantations all along the river and up Bayou Road toward Bayou St. John and the lake. The city of New Orleans was created from people sub-dividing their plantation land into streets and selling it lot by lot for profit.

True, there was a large swath of land (the "Back of Town") that was marshland. But a lot of that land remained relatively undeveloped until the 20th Century when they began to pump the water out systematically.

I think you'll find that the redevelopment of the city will follow similar lines. The older sections of town will be redeveloped first, and these newer marshy sections will be the last to see development. This actually worries me because my mom's land was in some of the newer parts of the city, and I fear its value will drop by a lot. Fortunately, it's quite close to the University of New Orleans, and that might save its value. But, for instance, much land in New Orleans East may lose 90% of its former value.

If you are interested in a history of the City of New Orleans, may I recommend this book:

Frenchmen Desire Good Children and Other Streets of New Orleans by John Chruchill Chase

[jakethebake]

very informative

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This actually worries me because my mom's land was in some of the newer parts of the city, and I fear its value will drop by a lot.

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If an opportunistic value seeking developer similar to Trump or Disney shows up, your Mom would have the last laugh.