Hold Back Those Bulldozers -- Officials are too eager to tear down bulidings in New Orleans

WSJ graphic.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, about the New Orleans situation. The piece concludes with this warning:

The clock is ticking. City building inspectors in New Orleans are already at work, and The Wall Street Journal quoted one official's estimate that "the total number of homes . . . that must be bulldozed is around 50,000." Some demolitions have already taken place--including the totally unwarranted razing of a significant landmark in the history of New Orleans jazz. The rush to demolition is gaining speed, with consequences that could make an already tragic situation even worse.

Ultimately, the question of how the Gulf Coast region should be rebuilt is one that its residents must answer. Let's hope they get the chance to do so before their region's future is decided for them.
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From the article, "New Orleans Reborn: Theme Park vs. Cookie Cutter," in today's New York Times:

Optimism is in short supply here. And as people begin to sift through the wreckage left by Hurricane Katrina, there is a creeping sense that the final blow has yet to be struck - one that will irrevocably blot out the city's past. The first premonition arose when Mayor C. Ray Nagin announced that the model for rebirth would be a pseudo-suburban development in the Lower Garden District called River Garden. The very suggestion alarmed preservationists, who pictured the remaking of historic neighborhoods into soulless subdivisions served by big-box stores.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times. A sales office at River Garden, the mayor's favored model for the future.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times. The generic suburban look of Abundance Square.
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Emergency reading suggestion for Mayor Nagin -- Chapter 4 of Changing Places which describes the conversion of Stanley Lowe, a community organizer (now vp of the National Trust) on housing issues in Pittsburgh, and how he came to understand that "suburbanizing the city" wasn't the solution to Pittsburgh's problems.