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Nicole Gelinas: New Orleans rebuilds
WASHINGTON -
Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina left 80 percent of New Orleans underwater for weeks, the city, in some ways, has rebounded remarkably. As of January, it boasted 302,000 residents, according to local data-crunching firm GCR & Associates. In early 2006, the city’s official planners had figured that just 247,000 people would be home by September 2008. New Orleanians have achieved much of this success by building and rebuilding on their own or with small-scale help, rather than under top-down government decree. They’re showing that thousands of individual planners are better than one master. ... Perversely, New Orleans’ modern history of weak, ineffectual government has helped it recover. Nobody in power had the political will, knowledge or resources to enforce a master plan. Property owners could ignore utopian or slow-moving schemes and get to work on their own. ... manhattan-institute.org |
