Here are some facts you can rely on:

The Sept 06 2005 CRS Report for Congress states and I quote that “the flooding in New Orleans was predicted but the extent of inundation was uncertain.”

Why was it predicted? Because Mega-storms (which began with Hurricane Andrew) were a new phenomenon which began in the 90’s. The vintage levees and floodgate systems were thought capable of withstanding a fast moving category 3 hurricane but a 4 or 5 were in question. New Orleans was clearly not prepared.

All of this information was presented to Congress by the Corp of Engineers as early as 2002 and congress refused to act.

In conclusion I humbly submit that HAD our government reacted quckly with the “relatively” cheap preventative effort the largest part of this disaster would never have occurred.

In the words of Don Henley “We get the government we deserve.”

I have long had this dream of building a re-creation of Bourbon Street a la Venice Italy.
Not like I’m a big land developer or anything, just a dream I have.

I had considered someday starting my amusement park down in Venice, La. or somewhere land was cheaper. It just wouldn’t have been feasable to consider doing something like that in New Orleans. Until now.
After seeing that entire areas of New Orleans may have to be bulldozed and rebuilt, I suddenly realized that this may be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Imagine a Mardi Gras parade with floats that actually do!

We could take some of the lower lying areas, perhaps around the 9th Ward and create a brand new small French Quarter with canals. Of course there would still be street access basically to what would be the backsides of the buildings.

The main drag would be a network of canals with extra wide pedestrian walkways on either side, rows of storefronts with large connected balconies allowing people to walk along the main mall out of the sun or rain. The architecture should be absolutely stunning, like a Mardi Gras poster, beveled glass, brass gaslamps, arched pedestrian bridges, very detail oriented. We could have contests among architects to see who can come with the most flavorful New Orleans style architecture. Water would be kept sparkling clean using a Living Machine system designed by Ocean Arks International. http://www.oceanarks.org/

There would be lots of alcove style doorways, mini stage areas, and gazebos offering good accoustics and shelter where street performers can ply their trade. I also envision an area similar to the French Market which has rows of fancy umbrella carts. We can make it easy for returning residents to get small business loans to start a variety of small cart sized businesses. Imagine not just Lucky Dog carts, but also beignet carts, jambalaya carts, oyster carts, gator on a stick, masks, etc. Small business training and assistance will be provided. If you are succesful with your cart, you can save your money and work your way up to your own small storefront. We should have an area set aside for artists, away from the music and noise and encourage the art scene we used to have in Jackson Square 10 years ago before the brass bands took over and made it impossible for over 100 other performers to conduct business over the volume. No offense intended. Keeping that in mind, we should designate interspersed areas for louder acts like brass bands, drum or amplified acts.

This would certainly do wonders to not only bring scores of tourists back into New Orleans, but bring commerce into even more areas of the city. I would personally like to see an area such as this open 24 hours as well, like Las Vegas.

I am very concerned. as I’m sure many of you are, that there will be a huge rush to build quickie, cube style housing using all generic Home Depot hardware and suddenly, Bang! everything looks justs like any other suburban housing, Anywheresville, U.S.A.. Starbucks, The Gap, Borders ,etc..
Not that I don’t appreciate what they’re doing up in Humanities Plaza, but for God’s sake don’t send any of those cubes to New Orleans. Send them to Baton Rouge or Mississippi, or Alabama but if you are going to be sending anything here, please have some consideration for the distinctive architectural heritage that is New Orleans. If you look at the reconstruction of San Francisco after the big fire, they did a good bit to preserve the look of the original architecture in a kind of cosmetic way: basically taking cubes and tacking on a Victorian face. I think if we are going to rebuild, we need to think beyond the Home Depot box and consider going the extra yard at the design stage. We need to basically recreate the hardware store of the past from which to draw our building materials, equipped with ornate railings, cast lamposts, fancy street sign holders, etc. and subsidise it somehow so it costs the same to the builders to make fancy buildings which compliment the building guidelines.

I realize of course that the cost of rebuilding old style housing using lots of wood like it’s an endless commodity has become very expensive as well as environmentally irresponsible. However none of us wants to end up with a city of plain brick cubes like the old housing projects either. Maybe we can’t have cast iron French balcony railings. But perhaps fiberglass or other modern materials might be more feasable. We can’t have lot’s of extra wood brick-a-brack on all our buidings, but replica cornices can be cast from recycled materials, nailed on and painted over. We cant have big pillars made out of solid wood, but we can cast the same out of steel and cement and have a a new New Orleans which is not only built to look, but built to last.

It is clear that we should lay an all new fiber optic and underground power grid. I advocate laying an interlocking system of underground tunnels like under Disneyworld which would allow quick security and emergency access to any part of the city, even during the busiest Mardi Gras. The new ground level of the 9th Ward and other low lying areas should be raised 20 feet, not just build higher levees. I am talking about probably the largest landfill project in the history of America. If Japan can build an airport in the ocean by moving a mountain, America can raise the 9th Ward.

Considering summer temperatures of 110 and 120 percent humidity, let us also keep in mind that building generic, single family cube style houses like they’re building up in New York will require a lot of air conditioning to keep them cool. That will waste more energy in our new city, which of course is exactly what George Bush and the power companies want.
The true challenge in designing the future architecture of New Orleans is to introduce the concept of environmentally sound and sustainable housing while doing as much as possible to maintain the look and feel of the Big Easy. Backsides of houses facing the sun are fitted with solar, while the front, shady side maintains a distinctive Mardi Gras style look.

I believe we can turn New New Orleans into a model city which other cities will copy for generations to come. On the other hand, we can also let our government, and good old American greed screw it up royally.
We need to have a plan. A Big Plan, not just a whole bunch of little ones.

You confuse the shipping function of the area with the city of NO itself.

Historically NO was the BIG port. But now shipping facilities exist for tens of miles around NO. I saw the figure that NO itself has about 3000 people working at its port facilities but there are over 100,000 elsewhere in the region who do so.

The original topic was rebuilding the city proper into some sort of paradise. That will benefit many, so we can expect wonderful claims will be made about how America cannot exist without the great flow of Mississippi commerce and the cultural richness of jazz, Mardi Gras, and above-ground burials.

The truth is that the Mississippi commerce will continue even if not one acre of NO is rebuilt. Some shippers will have to adjust but that is what business does.

I favor helping the city rebuild. Either do that or utterly raze it. But don’t just let it rot. And don’t rebuild it as a massive social experiment for urban planners? And why fear that we couldn’t live without this very old and very battered few square miles.

4 years later, we cannot build a single edifice at WTC. at his rate. new orleans will take a century before anything happens, while La. politicians keep on stealing & being (occasionally) locked up for it…

The ports at the mouth of the Mississippi are very important and among the busiest in the world.

The city is not vital to the ports. And the ports and shipping facilities were not much damaged.

It is natural that the people of NO want massive aid. But it really doesn’t matter if the city is restored. It is/was living on nostalgia and welfare, much of it old slums, with some life support from tourism themed around jazz legends and pagentry.

In other words “I like it” but in the way that I like a good magic show. I neither believe it or consider it important.

As for a rebuilding plan bringing in the best engineers, academics, and planners - “Lord deliver us from such madness.” I guess the academics, etc. want some of those big federal checks too.

Allbaugh’s Contractors want to make money by building a trailer park ghetto. Stop them before you do anything. That’s why we need Democracy 2.0 before we can do anything.

For this to succeed it has to be a confluence of engineering, new urbanism and architecure. Look into New Urbanism, with 100B on the table, a lot can be done. Don’t let Congress piss it away.

That bridge to nowhere is still being built with a cost of over 200M. All the noise we made and it’s still being built. Without Congress on board, Recovery 2.0 is going to turn into a “Bridge to Nowhere 2.0″.

Jeff, do your homework. New Orleans is the biggest port in the United States and the 3rd largest in the world. Over 50% of our exported grain goes out through New Orleans, and a significant portion of our natural gas and oil come in through there.

That such a critical resource was so poorly protected is a political battle we can fight if you want, but not rebuilding isn’t an option unless you are willing to raise gasoline prices by 30% and cut our food exports by half.

Beyond that. Map out new perimeter expressways. Condemn the property necessary for this. Build the expressways.

Compensate the property owners on the low side of the levee about $10 per acre and offer them a bargain purchase price on similar sized pieces of state or federal land in the vicinity. Compensate the property owners displaced by the perimeter road fair market value.

Do nothing else besides expediate building permits.

People are under the impression that corporations have higher profits as their primary goal. In reality, that’s a strategy towards getting higher valuation. If actual social costs were accounted for, a “green” strategy would yield greater stockholder value, and we’d see more corporations acting more “responsibly” because it would be in their self interest. Markets are good things - I believe that one of the major roles of government should be to insure that they operate fairly and efficiently.

Much of the impetus for stronger emissions regulation, for example, are coming from large corporations. They understand the need, but don’t want to be put at a short-term competitive disadvantage. Completely understandable, even if it blows up the “us vs them” rhetoric that too many people on both sides love. If you’re interested, I can get some more links for you on these topics. Or just read my blog - I write about some of these issues fairly often.

Currently, our system rewards reactive, after-the-fact approaches rather than proactive, risk-reduction approaches. It’s a complex issue, but it does go to the argument that our budgeting and priority systems are broken. Changing that requires a great deal more than the stale reformulations that both the “left” and the “right” provide us with.