This article appeared on WorldChanging with slight modifications on September 25th, 2006.
I've been musing over the notion of home, because I actually went home this week, to western Massachusetts. I haven't figured out much, obviously, since I live in Seattle, Washington, yet consider home to be over 3,000 miles away. But then again, home is a fiercely individual concept: it's hard to articulate all the elements that make a 'home'; our location, and notion, of home may change over time; we may not live, or be able to live, for various reasons, at home; and how we are comfortable with the environment, people, and our place in the greater scheme of things, are all, I think, wrapped up in this notion of 'home'.
I muse a bit more about my home, and the concept of home in general, on the next page. Although many more brilliant writers have addressed the topic of home, then again, they didn't have blogs and commenting, so perhaps they don't matter! I'm kidding -- they do matter -- but they can't have the same kind of conversation that I'd like to have with you all.
What I'm really curious about is you, Oh Reader. Please write back and tell us about your homes. Where are you from? Where do you live now? Are they in the same place? If not, how often do you go 'home'? Does it still exist? How is it changing? Is it changing too fast, or too slow, for a brighter, greener future?
(jump)
My Home:
I'm from Amherst, which is a small college town in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. The town is about an hour and a half to Boston and thre hours to New York. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the population is about 35,000 residents, though estimates seem to vary wildly, because of the large number of students in the area. There are approximately 30,000 students in five colleges in the area. I was rather surprised to find that we have a Wikipedia entry, but you can also find out what is happening in town at the town's very own website.
I noticed a lot of things, since I've been gone for awhile. The maple tree in front of our house is now nearly four stories high, no matter that I can remember it back at ten feet tall. The whole town is overwhelmingly, lushly green, with vegetation spilling into the roads and streets near my home. Driving on a back road the other afternoon, I noticed a towering wall of clouds on the horizon on an otherwise clear day -- not a typical sight in New England, until I realized that it was evaporation off of the Connecticut River. Finally, we are at the beginning of fall in New England; despite the regular turning of the seasons, the changing colors of the autumn leaves never, ever fail to shock me. As the chlorophyll in the trees is slowly destroyed by the autumn's lower temperatures, for a few short weeks, all of the trees in New England are clothed in glorious, garish reds, oranges, and yellows.
There are also certain changes that I noticed that are less beautiful, too. The strip mall in the next town over continues to expand, with more than ten big boxes, all in a fat row. Behind my house, there's a subdivision on what used to be a farmer's field. My mom avoids the town center now, because of traffic congestion. There are a lot more SUVs than I remember, too.
Home & Environmentalism:
It seems to me that our (my) attachment to home has both positive and negative implications for environmentalism. I've written before about the long time scales in nature that we can barely perceive, and we regularly highlight in these pages how remote sensing has expanded our capability to envision and imagine our impact on the earth. At home, however, one has more opportunity to notice changes of all kinds -- environmental, economic, physical, social, aesthetic -- as part of everyday life. Changes seem to be more immediate, and the processes that change our environment may seem more in our control. We might be able to witness the changes in our gardens or local ecosystems. We may have time to go to our town meeting to protest zoning changes or new developments. At larger scales, candidates and issues may not always seem connected or relevant to our lives. Systems like schools and infrastructure are always hot-button local issues, because they affect people's children, streets, or businesses.
Of course, my attachment to home, and tradition, is not necessarily good. As time has passed, the town has certainly changed, but has it adapted enough? For example, my small town was once based on agriculture, but is now largely based on services. The town (and area) is still rather spread-out, and requires one to drive, mostly, to do anything at all. And whether or not I like it, my town remains certainly connected to larger scales. We didn't invent most of our ideas, our currency, our technology, our economic niche, or global warming, but all of those things will surely affect my town, as it will affect us all. (Unless we secede from the U.S., that is; I assure you that this has been discussed at the town meeting before).
Furthermore, even if we like our homes and the world is 'out there', the local scale is not always superior. This is what is frequently referred to in academia as 'the local trap': put simply, just because it's local, doesn't mean that it is good. Local agriculture and food, though it can be more tasty, can be much less efficient in production, which is no small concern in countries which don't produce enough food. Local farmers and homeowners can either be the best users, or worst abusers, of pesticides and chemicals. There are legitimate economies of scale, in food production, in infrastructure, and in energy production.
In social terms, also, the concept of home, and belonging to it, must accommodate both our attachments to places, and an expanding vision of universal citizenship, including awareness of the environment and human rights. In Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, David Harvey criticizes the emphatic focus of communitarian theories on local self-determination, something along the lines of, there are some small communities in Arizona and Utah in which homophobia, polygamy, and child brides are the norm. So, how do we reconcile our local attachments and universal ambitions?
Please Comment:
I'd like to know, where is your 'home'? Do you live there? How is it changing? Do you want it to change?
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
The Coast of Utopia
Tom Stoppard has a trilogy of plays about the Russian Revolution, called the "The Coast of Utopia", opening at Lincoln Center in mid-October. I managed to get back to see one of the three plays in 2002, and it was kind of great, because it was at the National Theater in London, because the actors and atmosphere were freaking terrific, and because it captures a particular period of intellectual ferment and passion so well.
The plays do feel hugely uneven, but then again, so was the Russian Revolution! The charactization of ideas is largely based on Isiah Berlin's "Russian Thinkers", and I always thought that it would have been great to have read the book first and then to have seen the dramatization.
Anyway, the first play opens in New York on November 5th, and then the subsequent plays open in December and then January. As enthusiasm for the plays builds, so will the difficulty of getting tickets, so I really encourage you all to try to get tickets asap. I've always regretted not seeing more of them in London: one only needs to Google the name of the trilogy and read the ecstatic British reviews.
The plays do feel hugely uneven, but then again, so was the Russian Revolution! The charactization of ideas is largely based on Isiah Berlin's "Russian Thinkers", and I always thought that it would have been great to have read the book first and then to have seen the dramatization.
Anyway, the first play opens in New York on November 5th, and then the subsequent plays open in December and then January. As enthusiasm for the plays builds, so will the difficulty of getting tickets, so I really encourage you all to try to get tickets asap. I've always regretted not seeing more of them in London: one only needs to Google the name of the trilogy and read the ecstatic British reviews.
Atlanta blogs
This post is essentially a blogroll of the sites that I like, dealing with all things Atlanta. I start with a short list, but I'll revise it periodically in the future [last updated 9/18/06].
- Atlantalarry
- Bloglanta
- Atlantalarry
- Bloglanta
New Orleans: What's the Plan?
This article originally appeared on WorldChanging.com, September 7th:
Or, to describe the situation more accurately, why isn't there a plan yet for New Orleans? Though we've posted about the great work done over the past year, and on the uneven overall state of recovery, urban planning has not proceeded -- it cannot proceed -- because there are so many unresolved questions about the future of New Orleans. Who gets to plan the new city? Who is being planned for? Can government, or the free market, build something as complex as a city? Meaning, if we rebuild it, will people come back? Or, is the city continuing a historic and inexorable decline?
This post has many more questions than answers, and none of them are intended to be merely rhetorical. As large, vague and unwieldy as these questions are, they're also worth looking at in closer detail, not only because this was an unprecedented catastrophe to befall a modern American city -- only Chicago and San Francisco seem to compare -- but because the situation in New Orleans also raises some hard questions for the practice of urban planning. The rebuilding of New Orleans -- hopefully, for the better -- will be the biggest story of this (my) generation of urban planners, and how we solve (or fail to solve) them now tells us something about the future of urban planning efforts both in New Orleans and elsewhere.
Footprints or Communities?: One of the chief planning questions for the city of New Orleans is the area of the future city, the so-called footprint on a map. How big will the city be? This question has surfaced repeatedly both in terms of physical planning and political reality, as reported in this Times-Picayune article:
So, when planners talk about a smaller footprint, are they really talking about whether not to rebuild the African-American neighborhoods?. If those neighborhoods are not rebuilt, then are they really talking about moving people who are largely dispossessed, poor, and African-American? Does a smaller footprint and a smaller city mean that those people will go elsewhere? Is that in New Orleans, or out of New Orleans? Will those neighborhoods be preserved as communities -- wherever they end up -- or will they be dispersed? And, how will this be discussed? Will it be discussed at all? Which brings me to....
Is it a Just Planning Process?: Can the planning process in New Orleans ever be considered just, if it reflects the previous racial, social, and class divisions of the city? As I've been researching more about the city, I also asked a few friends, who are architects and planners working in and around New Orleans, what things that they felt were missing from the media coverage of the rebuilding effort.
A good friend from New Orleans, thought that what I -- and others -- are missing is the culture of government in New Orleans, where people expect the government to do nothing, or if it does anything at all, to do it with no great haste and unprecedented corruption. Another colleague said what is missing from press accounts is the level of racial distrust, the belief among poor African-American residents of New Orleans that nothing will be done fairly for them. She told me that without going there, one could not witness the legacy of distrust and suspicion among the residents, and how it quite literally colored their perception of the planning process. Finally, another colleague told me that the multiple planning processes are being run in haste, with not enough information being distributed to people, who have nowhere to meet, gather, organize, or communicate.
So, how can this miasma of distrust result in a just planning process.... or, is it just (another) planning process that masks existing power structures?
Is it Rebuilding or Redevelopment? The mayor of New Orleans has steadily maintained that all of the neighborhoods of New Orleans will be rebuilt because of a widespread economic boom and the power of the "free market". Most demographers, planners, developers, and business people, however, believe that the economic prospects for New Orleans are dimmer. Even before the storm, New Orleans already ranked third in poverty concentration, with a declining job and tax base.
Now that unprecedented sums of money are being pumped into New Orleans -- with much of the money going to individual homeowners and businesses -- can anyone predict what will happen to New Orleans? Will increasing amounts of economic activity lead to revitalization of the city, or will rebuilding the physical infrastructure do the trick?
The fairest thing to say, I think, is that we simply don't know what the future holds for New Orleans, because in many ways, we don't really know how to stimulate economic growth at the local level. The mechanics of economic development, whether through trade, technological change, social capital, or endogenous growth, is not well understood in theory or practice, particularly at the local level. We know that economic growth certainly won't occur if there isn't any housing, infrastructure, or insurance. However, the opposite is not necessarily true: we don't know if building any or all of these things are going to result in urban revitalization or economic growth.
So, if we rebuild the city as it was before, will it flourish? Will people return? Or, if we're redeveloping the city, what is our goal?
Why Has the Environmental Dimension Been So Quickly Forgotten? My last post mentioned that several environmental organizations released a report titled "One Year After Katrina: Louisiana Still a Sitting Duck" detailing the failure of the government and planners to address the continued erosion of New Orleans' wetlands that could have, and might still, protect the city from storm surges. However, the Times-Picayune mentioned that:
So, what is the role of positivist science in planning for the future, when the alarms are ignored? And, why have people forgotten so quickly the environmental causes of the original destruction?
Or, to describe the situation more accurately, why isn't there a plan yet for New Orleans? Though we've posted about the great work done over the past year, and on the uneven overall state of recovery, urban planning has not proceeded -- it cannot proceed -- because there are so many unresolved questions about the future of New Orleans. Who gets to plan the new city? Who is being planned for? Can government, or the free market, build something as complex as a city? Meaning, if we rebuild it, will people come back? Or, is the city continuing a historic and inexorable decline?
This post has many more questions than answers, and none of them are intended to be merely rhetorical. As large, vague and unwieldy as these questions are, they're also worth looking at in closer detail, not only because this was an unprecedented catastrophe to befall a modern American city -- only Chicago and San Francisco seem to compare -- but because the situation in New Orleans also raises some hard questions for the practice of urban planning. The rebuilding of New Orleans -- hopefully, for the better -- will be the biggest story of this (my) generation of urban planners, and how we solve (or fail to solve) them now tells us something about the future of urban planning efforts both in New Orleans and elsewhere.
Footprints or Communities?: One of the chief planning questions for the city of New Orleans is the area of the future city, the so-called footprint on a map. How big will the city be? This question has surfaced repeatedly both in terms of physical planning and political reality, as reported in this Times-Picayune article:
[One] vision of the mayor's rebuilding commission [was] to shrink the developed area, the so-called footprint, of a city that now has 235,000 people but was originally developed to cater to a peak population of more than 630,000 in 1960. That idea failed essentially because Mayor Ray Nagin, then in a re-election battle, refused to support shrinking the city, a notion tantamount to political kryptonite in many neighborhoods that feared being bulldozed. Nagin's decision, or lack of one, sparked outrage among urban planners at a national level....Although most of the public and media seem to agree that Mayor Nagin has done little since winning a comeback re-election, calls for "leadership" fail to address the social realities that have resulted in the physical shape of the city. Namely, Katrina seemed particularly cruel and unjust, because the storm and subsequent flooding revealed that the low-lying land in New Orleans was extremely vulnerable to flooding; the cheapest land was inhabited largely by the poor; and therefore African-Americans were most vulnerable during the storm because they were most likely to be poor and segregated. The storm made one's race, class, and risk of dying brutally equivalent, and shockingly visible.
Echoing a point often made by the Urban Land Institute, a prominent planning association that crafted an early rebuilding blueprint, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, said the city has failed a leadership test by refusing to shrink its developed area to match the realities of its shrunken population and flood control issues.... "I'm still looking for political leadership that is going to come clean with citizens and acknowledge that for the foreseeable future, it's going to be a smaller city," [American Planning Association Executive Director] Paul Farmer said.
So, when planners talk about a smaller footprint, are they really talking about whether not to rebuild the African-American neighborhoods?. If those neighborhoods are not rebuilt, then are they really talking about moving people who are largely dispossessed, poor, and African-American? Does a smaller footprint and a smaller city mean that those people will go elsewhere? Is that in New Orleans, or out of New Orleans? Will those neighborhoods be preserved as communities -- wherever they end up -- or will they be dispersed? And, how will this be discussed? Will it be discussed at all? Which brings me to....
Is it a Just Planning Process?: Can the planning process in New Orleans ever be considered just, if it reflects the previous racial, social, and class divisions of the city? As I've been researching more about the city, I also asked a few friends, who are architects and planners working in and around New Orleans, what things that they felt were missing from the media coverage of the rebuilding effort.
A good friend from New Orleans, thought that what I -- and others -- are missing is the culture of government in New Orleans, where people expect the government to do nothing, or if it does anything at all, to do it with no great haste and unprecedented corruption. Another colleague said what is missing from press accounts is the level of racial distrust, the belief among poor African-American residents of New Orleans that nothing will be done fairly for them. She told me that without going there, one could not witness the legacy of distrust and suspicion among the residents, and how it quite literally colored their perception of the planning process. Finally, another colleague told me that the multiple planning processes are being run in haste, with not enough information being distributed to people, who have nowhere to meet, gather, organize, or communicate.
So, how can this miasma of distrust result in a just planning process.... or, is it just (another) planning process that masks existing power structures?
Is it Rebuilding or Redevelopment? The mayor of New Orleans has steadily maintained that all of the neighborhoods of New Orleans will be rebuilt because of a widespread economic boom and the power of the "free market". Most demographers, planners, developers, and business people, however, believe that the economic prospects for New Orleans are dimmer. Even before the storm, New Orleans already ranked third in poverty concentration, with a declining job and tax base.
Now that unprecedented sums of money are being pumped into New Orleans -- with much of the money going to individual homeowners and businesses -- can anyone predict what will happen to New Orleans? Will increasing amounts of economic activity lead to revitalization of the city, or will rebuilding the physical infrastructure do the trick?
The fairest thing to say, I think, is that we simply don't know what the future holds for New Orleans, because in many ways, we don't really know how to stimulate economic growth at the local level. The mechanics of economic development, whether through trade, technological change, social capital, or endogenous growth, is not well understood in theory or practice, particularly at the local level. We know that economic growth certainly won't occur if there isn't any housing, infrastructure, or insurance. However, the opposite is not necessarily true: we don't know if building any or all of these things are going to result in urban revitalization or economic growth.
So, if we rebuild the city as it was before, will it flourish? Will people return? Or, if we're redeveloping the city, what is our goal?
Why Has the Environmental Dimension Been So Quickly Forgotten? My last post mentioned that several environmental organizations released a report titled "One Year After Katrina: Louisiana Still a Sitting Duck" detailing the failure of the government and planners to address the continued erosion of New Orleans' wetlands that could have, and might still, protect the city from storm surges. However, the Times-Picayune mentioned that:
"Timed to coincide with the media attention on New Orleans as the region marks one year since Katrina made landfall, a news conference on Monday to release [the report] underscored how marginal the issue remains. Panelists from the environmental groups outnumbered reporters, and no national news outlets attended the event at the Jax Brewery in the French Quarter." (Times-Picayune)It's not as if the phenomenon and consequences of storm surges are not well-understood: even before Katrina, a Scientific American article in 2001 detailed the effects of a hurricane on New Orleans, and many scientists had pointed out the dangers before the storm.
So, what is the role of positivist science in planning for the future, when the alarms are ignored? And, why have people forgotten so quickly the environmental causes of the original destruction?
New Orleans: What's Happening Now?
This article originally appeared on WorldChanging, September 6th:
Over the past week, at the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, almost all of the world's major news outlets have been reporting on the progress of recovery, rebuilding, and healing. The words most often used to describe the progress of New Orleans seem to be "sporadic" and "uneven", so just to get a handle on what is and what is not happening, here's a brief summary of the major issues of the day in New Orleans, with a gallery of links at the bottom for more reading.
The return of residents to the city seems to have slowed, with continued uncertainty about where infrastructure, insurance, and funds will be available in New Orleans. Only half of the original population of the city has returned. The Wall Street Journal reports on the pace of the recovery effort, and how the lack of critical infrastructure is hampering the recovery and rebuilding. The article isn't free, but clearly identifies some of the major issues. The Brookings Institution, a think-tank focused on government, offers a list of indicators to monitor the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts and a survey of rebuilding efforts at the city, state, and federal levels. Many of the features below also discuss the state of rebuilding.
In addition to the other existing agencies, the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) was created by the Louisiana governor in October 2005 to coordinate planning and coordination of the recovery effort. Authorities like this -- such as the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in the case of the World Trade Center attacks -- are often formed to focus on particular government projects, to channel federal and state funds, and often, to bypass normal government channels which are considered too slow. NPR has an interview with one of the board members, explaining its mission and priorities.
With no long-term plan in place one year after the storm, much has been made of the dueling teams of architects and planners working for various political and financial interests. The best summary is a recent Times-Picayune article. For those of you scoring at home, some of the agencies and organizations involved so far are the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a real-estate industry organization, and the mayor's own business-led Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) commission, both of which suggested a smaller city footprint based on flood zones; separately, the City Council and the Greater New Orleans Foundation hired different consultants to work with each of the individual neighborhoods to draft their own plans; and finally, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the Greater New Orleans Foundation (again) money to come up with a single plan, the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP). The chief issue seems to be how individual neighborhoods are allowed to plan for themselves; what areas receive infrastructure; and whether the individual or unified plan will qualify for federal rebuilding money. Fighting within the planning process, hopefully, will be resolved by a planning pact that was signed last Monday, also as reported by the Times-Picayune.
The multiple planning efforts -- and a general lack of enthusiasm for their results thus far -- also underscores how far apart individual and official perceptions of the planning process remain. Though it is easy to get absorbed in the various official efforts, the reality is that much of the public apparently remains confused, frustrated, and unable to participate fully in any planning process. A colleague working in New Orleans wrote the following to me:
One interesting aspect of the Katrina coverage is that the media has done a good job of highlighting the gap between the perception of individual homeowners, residents and workers, and that of government officials, because media articles have regularly alternated between human-interest stories at the individual level, and following the inner workings of government at the political level. Much of the original power of the Katrina story came from the incredible disconnect of city, state and federal government officials to the actual events (and suffering) on the ground, a tone and view that persists in the coverage of the rebuilding effort.
Mainstream media, you're doing a heck of a job.... except, perhaps, on environmental issues! One of the biggest stories about Katrina was the vivid interplay between environmental and social issues. What's happening, above all, with the wetlands and levee system? At Grist.org, Michael Grunwald reports that the levee system is being built again for Category 3 protection, and that the Corps are "studying Category 5 protection -- but instead of focusing on New Orleans, [the Corps] seems eager to dike most of coastal Louisiana, which would presumably destroy more wetlands and promote more floodplain development". Recently, as reported by the Times-Picayune, a number of environmental organizations released a report titled "One Year After Katrina: Louisiana Still a Sitting Duck" detailing the failure of the government and planners to address the continued erosion of New Orleans' wetlands that could have, and might still, protect the city from storm surges. However, the reporter goes onto note that:
The psychological impact of the storm continues to be felt, with surveys reporting a surge in the number of mental issues among Katrina survivors, but with suicide rates flat. The legacy of the storm is also illustrated in the story of one local reporter.
More resources, including first-hand accounts, pictures, maps, and features are below:
Blogosphere on Hurricane Katrina:
Please suggest any pieces or links that you found intriguing, thoughtful, provocative, enraging, different, or whatever, below.
Over the past week, at the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, almost all of the world's major news outlets have been reporting on the progress of recovery, rebuilding, and healing. The words most often used to describe the progress of New Orleans seem to be "sporadic" and "uneven", so just to get a handle on what is and what is not happening, here's a brief summary of the major issues of the day in New Orleans, with a gallery of links at the bottom for more reading.
The return of residents to the city seems to have slowed, with continued uncertainty about where infrastructure, insurance, and funds will be available in New Orleans. Only half of the original population of the city has returned. The Wall Street Journal reports on the pace of the recovery effort, and how the lack of critical infrastructure is hampering the recovery and rebuilding. The article isn't free, but clearly identifies some of the major issues. The Brookings Institution, a think-tank focused on government, offers a list of indicators to monitor the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts and a survey of rebuilding efforts at the city, state, and federal levels. Many of the features below also discuss the state of rebuilding.
In addition to the other existing agencies, the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) was created by the Louisiana governor in October 2005 to coordinate planning and coordination of the recovery effort. Authorities like this -- such as the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in the case of the World Trade Center attacks -- are often formed to focus on particular government projects, to channel federal and state funds, and often, to bypass normal government channels which are considered too slow. NPR has an interview with one of the board members, explaining its mission and priorities.
With no long-term plan in place one year after the storm, much has been made of the dueling teams of architects and planners working for various political and financial interests. The best summary is a recent Times-Picayune article. For those of you scoring at home, some of the agencies and organizations involved so far are the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a real-estate industry organization, and the mayor's own business-led Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) commission, both of which suggested a smaller city footprint based on flood zones; separately, the City Council and the Greater New Orleans Foundation hired different consultants to work with each of the individual neighborhoods to draft their own plans; and finally, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the Greater New Orleans Foundation (again) money to come up with a single plan, the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP). The chief issue seems to be how individual neighborhoods are allowed to plan for themselves; what areas receive infrastructure; and whether the individual or unified plan will qualify for federal rebuilding money. Fighting within the planning process, hopefully, will be resolved by a planning pact that was signed last Monday, also as reported by the Times-Picayune.
The multiple planning efforts -- and a general lack of enthusiasm for their results thus far -- also underscores how far apart individual and official perceptions of the planning process remain. Though it is easy to get absorbed in the various official efforts, the reality is that much of the public apparently remains confused, frustrated, and unable to participate fully in any planning process. A colleague working in New Orleans wrote the following to me:
"District planners are charged with coordinating the neighborhood plans to be folded into a city-wide plan -- by December. The process of selection [of consultants] was flawed.... the idea was to have an inclusive, community-based planning process.... [but] the entire election process was far from transparent. With only a few days to get information out to the public, two days of meetings in a city park (capacity of the room was probably about 300 people), and only a week to gather votes, it was far from inclusive and very confusing to the public" (their emphasis).The deadline for planning to show results is rapidly approaching, because the federal government will begin (or at least, try to begin) disbursing money to individual homeowners for rebuilding, starting this month. In the absence of a coherent or sensible planning process, individual homeowners may vote where and how to rebuild with their feet, money and/or hammers, on an individual basis, and simply ignore a dysfunctional planning process. However, faced with a multitude of different programs and agencies -- such as Small Business Administration (SBA) grants, LRA, and FEMA money -- many individual homeowners remain confused and frustrated with the processes to obtain funds. The Times Picayune also reported on August 28 that the website for the "Road Home" grants was overwhelmed and was taken down because of technical problems.
One interesting aspect of the Katrina coverage is that the media has done a good job of highlighting the gap between the perception of individual homeowners, residents and workers, and that of government officials, because media articles have regularly alternated between human-interest stories at the individual level, and following the inner workings of government at the political level. Much of the original power of the Katrina story came from the incredible disconnect of city, state and federal government officials to the actual events (and suffering) on the ground, a tone and view that persists in the coverage of the rebuilding effort.
Mainstream media, you're doing a heck of a job.... except, perhaps, on environmental issues! One of the biggest stories about Katrina was the vivid interplay between environmental and social issues. What's happening, above all, with the wetlands and levee system? At Grist.org, Michael Grunwald reports that the levee system is being built again for Category 3 protection, and that the Corps are "studying Category 5 protection -- but instead of focusing on New Orleans, [the Corps] seems eager to dike most of coastal Louisiana, which would presumably destroy more wetlands and promote more floodplain development". Recently, as reported by the Times-Picayune, a number of environmental organizations released a report titled "One Year After Katrina: Louisiana Still a Sitting Duck" detailing the failure of the government and planners to address the continued erosion of New Orleans' wetlands that could have, and might still, protect the city from storm surges. However, the reporter goes onto note that:
"Timed to coincide with the media attention on New Orleans as the region marks one year since Katrina made landfall, a news conference on Monday to release [the report] underscored how marginal the issue remains. Panelists from the environmental groups outnumbered reporters, and no national news outlets attended the event at the Jax Brewery in the French Quarter." (Times-Picayune)One important question that I'll comment more on in the future, is why has the environmental dimension of the Katrina catastrophe been so quickly forgotten? As for future hurricanes, hurricane season is being closely watched this year -- just Google "Ernesto", or check out NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NOAA NHC).
The psychological impact of the storm continues to be felt, with surveys reporting a surge in the number of mental issues among Katrina survivors, but with suicide rates flat. The legacy of the storm is also illustrated in the story of one local reporter.
More resources, including first-hand accounts, pictures, maps, and features are below:
Blogosphere on Hurricane Katrina:
- Shakepeare's Sister has an extensive blogswarm, or round-up of blog links, for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (scroll down);
- Coturnix offers a retrospective list of Katrina-related blog posts from the past year, both on his blog and others;
- Flickr offers a big cluster of about 100,000 photographs tagged with "katrina";
- Chris Mooney, New Orleans native and author of "The Republican War on Science", has an entry at the Huffington Post titled "Katrina, Science and Politics"; a personal recap of one-year after Katrina; and most of his more recent posts for scienceblogs.com also focus on Katrina and hurricanes;
- Thoughts from Kansas has an appropriately thoughtful post on the role of science and politics in Katrina as well;
- The World's Fair has a more unusual round-up of scientific research stimulated by Hurricane Katrina. There are several serious contenders for an Ig Nobel Prize here!
- Both Stranger Fruit and Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge retain a sense of post-Katrina outrage at the incompetent response, which is a bit muted in the mainstream media, one year later.
- The New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, reported rather heroically throughout Hurricane Katrina, winning two Pulitzer Prizes, and is perhaps the best local source of information at NOLA.com.
- The New York Times has been running a series of articles called "Katrina Year", and offers the thoughtful, measured coverage that one expects from a national paper.
- The Washington Post investigates why the cleanup and rebuilding has been so slow.
- CNN.com's feature on Katrina has a fancy interactive map with pictures and updates on the progress of rebuilding.
- National Public Radio, I think, has the most comprehensive feature, with a range of articles spanning from politics to personal stories, with web interactive pages on the population of New Orleans before and after the storm, a map showing the state of rebuilding, and above all, the power of radio to communicate in ways that mere pictures and words on a page cannot. What sticks with me the most sometimes are the haunting sounds of the people and places after the storm, and still before the rebuilding.
Please suggest any pieces or links that you found intriguing, thoughtful, provocative, enraging, different, or whatever, below.
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