Robert Little/Douglas Birch: Rebuilding New Orleans Means Considering Old, New
... The New Orleans' City Council met last week at Louis Armstrong International Airport, and its members also pledged to rebuild. Past floods and hurricanes, along with yellow fever epidemics in the 1800s, all failed to drive the city to ruin, and so will Katrina, they said.
"New Orleans has been built back from many disasters," said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge Morrell. "New Orleans was here before there was a United States of America."
One saving grace for the city could be its unique standing as one of the country's cultural nerve centers, famous for its diversity, its music and cuisine, and its raucous nightlife. With only limited damage in the French Quarter and areas along the banks of the Mississippi River, those attributes can likely survive, officials say.
A team of preservationists and architectural historians watched and snapped pictures Wednesday as a fire in the city's Garden District flared up and jumped to three nearby homes, none of them historically significant. "It looks like the old city that everyone really values is intact," one of them said, before moving off to document more of the damage.
Ari Kelman, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about the city, said he thinks its unique cultural offerings will not only endure but will also ensure that New Orleans is largely rebuilt to accommodate them. That culture, and the sense of community built around it, creates a potent sociological mix that will not be easily defeated by a one-time historical event, he said.
The city's location at the mouth of the Mississippi River also provides it with important status as a transportation hub - for example, much of the nation's banana imports travel through the city - that also will likely survive, he added.
"Are we ready to see bananas become a luxury item in this country? I think not," Kelman said. "Geography still matters. It mattered to Jefferson when he wanted to buy Louisiana, and it matters today."
But history also suggests that cities don't always recover from such disasters and often struggle with vast economic and social change when they do. Historians who studied the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 point out that the city was considered the industrial center of the West before the earthquake and subsequent fires and that it never regained that status or much of a manufacturing base.
"New Orleans has been built back from many disasters," said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge Morrell. "New Orleans was here before there was a United States of America."
One saving grace for the city could be its unique standing as one of the country's cultural nerve centers, famous for its diversity, its music and cuisine, and its raucous nightlife. With only limited damage in the French Quarter and areas along the banks of the Mississippi River, those attributes can likely survive, officials say.
A team of preservationists and architectural historians watched and snapped pictures Wednesday as a fire in the city's Garden District flared up and jumped to three nearby homes, none of them historically significant. "It looks like the old city that everyone really values is intact," one of them said, before moving off to document more of the damage.
Ari Kelman, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about the city, said he thinks its unique cultural offerings will not only endure but will also ensure that New Orleans is largely rebuilt to accommodate them. That culture, and the sense of community built around it, creates a potent sociological mix that will not be easily defeated by a one-time historical event, he said.
The city's location at the mouth of the Mississippi River also provides it with important status as a transportation hub - for example, much of the nation's banana imports travel through the city - that also will likely survive, he added.
"Are we ready to see bananas become a luxury item in this country? I think not," Kelman said. "Geography still matters. It mattered to Jefferson when he wanted to buy Louisiana, and it matters today."
But history also suggests that cities don't always recover from such disasters and often struggle with vast economic and social change when they do. Historians who studied the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 point out that the city was considered the industrial center of the West before the earthquake and subsequent fires and that it never regained that status or much of a manufacturing base.