SOCIAL: FW: (Public.Spaces) NY Times editorial - From Hell to High Water

[Amy Tanner]

INteresting op-ed in the NYtimes about parallels between New Orleans and NY.

While I agree with a lot of it, I think it neglects to acknowledge the 
environmental issues of building in flood zones.

>One of PPS's board members, Roberta Brandes Gratz, contributed this
>op-ed piece to the New York Times:
>
>
>
>February 22, 2006
>
>Op-Ed Contributor
>
>
>From Hell to High Water
>
>
>By ROBERTA BRANDES GRATZ
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/opinion/22gratz.html
>
>PREDICTING that a good number of evacuated residents will never return,
>a New Orleans mayoral commission recently declared that the city should
>abandon flood-ravaged neighborhoods, invest only in stable areas on high
>ground and shift residents to new developments. If a neighborhood isn't
>"sustainable," the city should raze it.
>
>New Yorkers with long memories can't help but feel they have heard all
>this before. These proposals aren't much different from the ones for the
>"planned shrinkage" of New York in the 1970's, when abandoned buildings
>seemed more plentiful than occupied ones. The experts said that
>investing in neighborhoods where few people remained was throwing good
>money after bad; those areas were unlivable. Restoring old,
>deteriorating buildings was a waste of limited resources; the city was
>getting smaller. We should focus instead on populated neighborhoods and
>healthy commercial districts.
>
>The experts, of course, were wrong. And the thousands of New Orleanians
>fighting experts' recommendations to shrink the city should take heart
>from New York's experience.
>
>In the 1970's, New York was losing 36,000 residential units a year
>citywide to neglect and arson, after decades when cities were out of
>fashion and investing in them was discouraged. New York was on the verge
>of bankruptcy, and the assumption was that everyone wanted to escape
>urban life.
>
>But the New Yorkers who stayed were undaunted. Residents in the
>communities that urban experts had given up on took back the streets,
>scraped together grants from foundations and meagerly financed city
>programs, occupied and renovated abandoned buildings, and turned
>rubble-strewn lots into neighborhood gardens. One building, one block,
>one neighborhood at a time, citizens chose to improve rather than move.
>
>The South Bronx, one of the most devastated areas, saw an endless
>variety of innovative efforts starting in the late 1970's. By 2000, the
>South Bronx had 57,361 new units in rehabilitated apartment buildings
>and 10,000 units in new two- and three-family town houses.
>
>A community group called Banana Kelly rebuilt three vacant four-story
>apartment houses scheduled for demolition by the city and went on to
>renew a 10-block area of the South Bronx, with regeneration spreading
>beyond. Another organization, We Stay/Nos Quedamos, resisted plans to
>force out residents and businesses in the Melrose neighborhood by razing
>old buildings and replacing them with a low-density, middle-income
>project. Today, mixed-income, high-density town houses and low-rise
>apartments reflect a repopulated and vibrant community.
>
>Artists converted part of the monumental American Bank Note complex in
>Hunts Point into the Point, a cultural center anchoring a solid
>mixed-use district. Several groups came together to clean up the Bronx
>River. An old concrete plant is being turned into a city park, and a
>multifaceted greenway along the river is emerging.
>
>In these neighborhoods, residents were the catalyst for renewal. City
>officials eventually recognized the momentum and responded with support.
>Citizen efforts made areas attractive to developers who, with generous
>incentives, then built housing and took credit for the renewal visible
>today.
>
>Just as in New York, New Orleans residents can defy official
>prescriptions. As I saw on a recent visit, New Orleanians feel abandoned
>by everyone and cheated by insurance companies. But instead of quietly
>accepting the government's declarations that their houses are
>unsalvageable, they're cleaning out flooded homes and learning how to
>rebuild. Their outcry against the mayoral commission's recommendation
>that the city impose a moratorium on reconstruction in flooded areas
>effectively killed that idea.
>
>It is those kinds of efforts that will bring New Orleans back. Organic
>urban neighborhoods are self-generated, not developer-built. The family
>enclaves, extensive social networks, well-attended churches, historic
>attachment to property and fierce dedication to local culture and place
>make New Orleans unique. If that authentic energy is stifled by
>misguided strategies, neighborhoods will die.
>
>"Lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own
>regeneration," Jane Jacobs wrote 45 years ago in "Death and Life of
>Great American Cities." This can be true of New Orleans today if its
>leaders allow those seeds to be sown.
>
>Roberta Brandes Gratz is the author of "Cities Back From the Edge: New
>Life for Downtown."
>
>*	Copyright 2006
><http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New
>York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>
>
>
>
>
>
>Katie Salay
>
>Associate
>
>Project for Public Spaces
>700 Broadway New York, NY 10003
>T (212) 620-5660 x 313  F (212) 620-3821
>http://www.pps.org <http://www.pps.org>
>
>
>
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