September 5, 2005
IT IS not easy to write from a distance about tragedies of the magnitude of what has happened in New Orleans this past week. I have visited the Big Easy on a couple of occasions and remember it as a fun-filled city of unique character, wonderful people and, of course, great cuisine.
It's hard to believe that what we are seeing on our TV screens is the same place. The following is from the pen of the American columnist Neal Peirce.
Regards, Neil
Katrina aftermath: tears of a civic warrior
"I got out at the last moment, driving 16 straight hours to Birmingham with Evelyn Cox, my 96-year old neighbour, and Coco the French cat. We are very fortunate to have made it."
Almost as a stab in the dark, I had e-mailed William Borah, a New Orleans civic activist, to pose a question about how Louisiana could have better defended itself against hurricane fury. Now, within hours, he'd somehow got on-line and was replying.
On the phone, more details tumbled out. Leaving New Orleans after noon on Sunday, forced to head east and then learning by cellphone from a friend that the cone of Katrina's projected path covered all of Mississippi, Borah knew the only choice for himself and his sprightly companion: keep on moving.
"We drove through sheets of rain, past dark woods, cars hardly moving, passing vehicle after vehicle pulled to the side of the road with empty gas tanks. All the time with that monster storm at our backs. When we were lucky enough to hit a 'last chance' working gas pump, we filled up and bought some crackers and cheese and cokes. The food was as delicious as Antoine's and Galatoire's combined. Evelyn said, 'This is an adventure.' She was a trooper!"
And now? "I am devastated. My city lies in ruins. I know I can't get home; my car is my home; I'm hearing it may be months. I have one cheque in my pocket; I'm like a refugee, wandering. It is the strangest feeling. And then on television I see the shots of my city, the total devastation, and views of street scenes - corners, bars, shops I can identify precisely, even a drug store looters are vandalising. It brings tears to my eyes."
Of course others, losing direct family or totally destitute in temporary shelters, are immeasurably less fortunate. Yet I find special sadness to Borah's fate. Here's a man who, from the 1960s onward, devoted himself to fighting highways, hotels and super-stores he believed would obliterate historic structures and the wondrous urban fabric of his fabled city on the Mississippi.
In the 1960s, Borah helped stop a proposed interstate highway that would have plowed through and largely destroyed the French Quarter and famed Jackson Square. His most recent battle was to prevent a massive WalMart store and parking lot in the historic, pedestrian-scale Lower Garden District. He likened such projects to "Godzilla coming into town, crushing historic structures underfoot and leaving big-box stores and acres of parking".
Borah counts himself among members of a preservation community that have struggled, from the 1920s onwards, to protect New Orleans's architectural soul in the city's neighbourhoods of Creole, Greek Revival and Queen Anne buildings, the unique flavour that drew visitors from across America and the world.
"We fought like devils, giving time and money and years to make sure new development complements, doesn't destroy the city," Borah says. "New Orleans didn't, like so many other cities, turn itself over to the automobile.
"Today across America people talk about New Urbanism and neighbourhoods of mixed-use development where street grid systems work. Well, New Orleans is the model. The French founded this place, and they knew what they were doing."
Yet when flood waters recede, how much of New Orleans will still be worth preserving? Or will quickly concocted but perhaps insensitive redevelopment proposals start rolling out? Borah alleges that his erstwhile opponents - major business leaders and many of their political friends - always yearned to make New Orleans a go-getter city, like Dallas or Houston, opting for glitzy, out-of-place development.
Indeed, Borah so often opposed their plans that they castigated him as a hopeless obstructionist. Instead, he argued, New Orleans should always focus first on keeping its soul, the lasting economic stimulant of visitors forever coming to savour the city's magic for themselves.
And he argued unsuccessfully - in the face of New Orleans's age-old predilection for favouritism, government by deal and outright corruption - for a tough city master plan, controlling where development should go and not.
He favoured Louisiana law requiring strong land use regulations, especially to hold back development in parishes along the Gulf Coast that are especially vulnerable to erosion.
Virtually none of those controls ever came. Along with its neighbours of Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, Louisiana is one of a handful of states so firmly in the hands of special interests that they require neither building codes nor development plans from their local governments.
That, combined with coastal wetlands the size of Manhattan crumbling into the Gulf each year, has left New Orleans without a buffer to even start diminishing a hurricane's wind strength as it hits land.
Every state and city and generation needs Borah-style whistle blowers. They are not always right. But amazingly often, they are. Ignoring them can be dangerous.
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