"It's human n7723418-2.jpgature to want to rebuild very quickly after a disaster," said Paul Farmer, executive director of the association. "We see all over the world the desire almost immediately to rebuild almost exactly what was there."
But the destruction wrought by Katrina and the failures of the levees presents opportunities for building something better, said Farmer and the other planners. The infrastructure can be put in place to withstand stronger storms, while funding can be provided for Coastal 2050, a six-year-old plan for restoring regional wetlands, marshes and ecology.
The plan's $14 billion price tag, said APA senior research associate Jim Schwab, is basically peanuts compared with the overall rebuilding costs. "It's better to develop with nature, rather than against her," says APA President David Siegel.
On a more localized scale, Steve Villavaso, president of APA's Lousiana chapter, said that the destruction would speed up development plans that had been languishing. Planners had long had their eye on a dormant shopping center as the site of a new town center, as part of a projected "renaissance plan" for eastern New Orleans. That idea might have taken a decade or more to come to fruition, but since the shopping center will have to be taken down due to water damage, it should be a relative cinch.
For all their optimism that a better New Orleans can be rebuilt, though, the planners were careful to stress that this will be a multi-year effort, requiring unprecedented dollars and citizen involvement. And, although many residents are itching to return, not all of them will. Villavaso predicted that New Orleans will remain the state's second most populous city--behind the newly doubled-in-size Baton Rouge--for the next two census counts to come.
But because of New Orleans' importance--not just its rich cultural heritage, but its position as the fulcrum of middle-American shipping and oil and gas production--Farmer insisted that the city will be rebuilt.
