2,000 vacant NOLA (New Orleans) houses given to developers

Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, June 2006.

The best way to bring back disinvested neighborhoods is to attract committed people willing to invest. Developers in this case, are for the most part, speculators--interested in making a buck but not really interested in pushing revitalization forward.

One of the most successful programs in the country attracting residents to an underpopulated neighborhood with crime and other issues is the Paducah Artist Relocation Project. But Baltimore did the same thing 30+ years ago when it gave away houses in Fells Point, houses no longer needed when the freeway proposal--for which the city had bought the houses--was defeated. The houses go to people who provide plans laying out what they are going to do, not to people who don't have a plan.

Anyway, don't look to developers for a focus on civic engagement and promoting the use value of place. (DC's Home Again project is a perfect example of the convoluted and forever nature of such government initiated projects.)

This relates to this blog entry, "Barbarians at the Gate," from the Gentilly Girl blog, in New Orleans. Another bad idea from Mayor Ray Nagin.


Index Keywords: Growth-Machine; urban-revitalization