High-level problem-solving
Courtesy of the NYTimes: Plan Would Open All New Orleans for Rebuilding
Sounds like they're gonna go with the Canizaro Plan... and in a year, if your neighborhood doesn't "come back" well enough, you're outta there.
There's a technical phrase for this kind of problem-solving: "Ignore it; maybe it'll go away"
3 Comments:
Another problem, by giving neighborhoods a year to come back the plan effectively says that only the more well-off or desirable areas will be resettled. Rightly or not, that's bound to bring up race and class issues. Also, how broadly does it define neighborhood? If a small area block comes back in the middle of a largely deserted area, will it be condemned? For this non-plan to be fair, it would have to put off decisions for over a year. Who wants that?
I don't know that I totally object to this plan, actually, but I liked it better when the time span was longer than a year. It used to be 3 years.
It strikes a balance between the ULI plan ("here's where you can live, here's where you can't, aren't we so smart") and the sort of endlessly drawn-out spotty rebuilding that would lead to blight if things were just left wide open.
But I think a year is too short. And the clock shouldn't start ticking on a neighborhood until progress is made on levees and debris removal. At the rate things are going, they aren't even gonna have that barge removed from the Lower Ninth a year from now, and you can't really blame somebody for not wanting to rebuild on a street with a barge on it.
Fundamentally, I see the Canizaro Plan as a stall. Basically, the same battles would be fought in a year - or three years.
Let's assume - just for discussion - that the Ninth Ward doesn't "make the cut" for redevelopment. Can you imagine the dust that will be kicked up after a year of partial rebuilding?
This whole argument is likely to hang in the courts forever without something less... nebulous.
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