{"id":960,"date":"2009-10-23T09:13:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T15:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=960"},"modified":"2009-10-23T10:57:38","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T16:57:38","slug":"the-atlantic-on-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2009\/10\/the-atlantic-on-new-orleans\/","title":{"rendered":"the atlantic on new orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wayne Curtis in The Atlantic<\/em> on architecture and the reconstruction of New Orleans<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Four years after Katrina, the rebuilding of New Orleans is not proceeding the way anyone envisioned, nor with the expected cast of characters. (If I may emphasize: Brad Pitt is the city\u2019s most innovative and ambitious housing developer.) But it\u2019s hard to say what people were<\/em> expecting, given the magnitude of the disaster and the hopes raised in the weeks immediately following. Seventeen days after the storm, President George W. Bush stood in Jackson Square and promised: \u201cWe will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The terms we<\/em>, as long as it takes<\/em>, and help<\/em> turned out to be fairly elastic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency shuttered its long-term recovery office about six months later, after a squabble with the city over who would pay for the planning process. Since then, depending on whom you talk to, government at all levels has been passive and slow-moving at best, or belligerent and actively harmful at worst. Mayor Ray Nagin occasionally surfaces to advertise a big new scheme (a jazz park, a theater district), about which no one ever hears again. A new 20-year master plan and comprehensive zoning ordinance was being ironed out early this summer, but it remains subject to city-council approval. A post-Katrina master plan has been under discussion since before the floodwaters were pumped out.<\/p>\n

In the absence of strong central leadership, the rebuilding has atomized into a series of independent neighborhood projects. And this has turned New Orleans\u2014moist, hot, with a fecund substrate that seems to allow almost anything to propagate\u2014into something of a petri dish for ideas about housing and urban life. An assortment of foundations, church groups, academics, corporate titans, Hollywood celebrities, young people with big ideas, and architects on a mission have been working independently to rebuild the city\u2019s neighborhoods, all wholly unconcerned about the missing master plan. It\u2019s at once exhilarating and frightening to behold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps the most interesting section is the portion on 3428 Dauphine St and Andres Duany; I can’t decide if Duany is being incredibly condescending or accidentally brilliant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wayne Curtis in The Atlantic on architecture and the reconstruction of New Orleans: Four years after Katrina, the rebuilding of New Orleans is not proceeding the way anyone envisioned, nor with the expected cast of characters. (If I may emphasize: Brad Pitt is the city\u2019s most innovative and ambitious housing developer.) But it\u2019s hard to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,127],"tags":[843,230,215,231,844],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asides","category-readings","tag-architecture","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-urbanism","tag-sustainability","tag-urbanism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}