So, how do you see the future of New Orleans?

[ktowntennesseedem]

What course of action do you see playing out over the next few years? I didn't offer very many options, because right now I can't think of any other possibilities.

[LiberalVoice]

1. 500 years from now New Orleans will be known as...

the beginings of our water world.

[tridim]

2. You can't build on 20 feet of marshy fill dirt

That won't work.

[davidinalameda]

4. you want to make a bet

there are lots of areas in the San Francisco Bay area that are reclaimed bay

I happen to live in one of them

[Ediacara]

9. Oh come on!

I know you're smarter than this. It may be prime real estate, but it's also a prime kill zone in minor (and major) earthquakes. Unconsolidated sediment is probably the worst land to build buildings on.

[davidinalameda]

19. exactly

back in 89 when Loma Priata hit, the Marina neighborhood in San Francisco sustained some of the greatest damage due to the ground basically liquefying

[jobycom]

3. They raised Galveston Island several feet after the 1900 hurricane

They may raise New Orleans. More likely, though, they will develop a better pumping system and try to restore the wetlands as a buffer to the storm surge. Hopefully someone will develop a series of artificial buffers somewhere.

Or maybe they'll enhance their canal system and become the Venice of America.

I can't wait for the horror to be over so we can start working on the optimistic rebuilding phase.

[anitar1]

11. They used to have barrier islands that helped protect them

but I guess they were "developed." Also many marshlands were destroyed through the years. Someone was talking about it on MSNBC a couple of nights ago. Not good to mess with nature.

[GumboYaYa]

21. Our barrier islands eroded thanks largely in part to the oil

industry. It's time to make those bastards pay for the damage they have done to the world.

[RobertSeattle]

5. In the future, we'll have mega cities floating on water

Might as well start now.

[Ediacara]

6. Are you willing to spend $1T to rebuild the place

Only to have it destroyed again in 25 years? How many residents are rebuilders willing to kill so that Mardi Gras can continue?

It'll cost $14B just to rebuild the seawall! How much do you think it's going to cost to rebuild the sewer system, electrical system, water system, the roads and trains, and rebuild 99% of all buildings?

If you think the price will be anything less that $1T you need to lay off the drugs....

I'm not trying to be callous, or diminish the memory of those lost, but N.O. will keep sinking, the Gulf will keep rising, and hurricanes will be much more common. These are facts people need to face.

Rebuild a shipping port if you must, but don't build a city there.

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. A lot depends on money provided for the cause

And this administration is not interested in financing domestic things.

[kenny blankenship]

8. W's Waterworld

with thrilling rides for the whole family:
"...Aaaand looking to port--that's your left hand folks--those white things gleaming beneath the waves are a pile of real human bones! They shift around like sandbars with the passage of large rainstorms and leap tides..."

[jody]

10. Real estate developers will buy up most of the low income housing

destroyed then have the zoning commission rezone NO for upscale development. Get government grants to repair enough historic sites to make NO a tourist trap. Eminent domain will enable much of the new development.

NO will rise again as a testament to all that is bad about unfettered capitalism. The poor will be banished to the fringes of NO, close enough to catch a bus to work but far enough away to avoid being a nuisance to the tourist trade.

[garthranzz]

12. And the last paragraph differed from pre-Katrina how?

[ktowntennesseedem]

14. Yep, sounds just like the New Orleans I remeber. -nt

[jody]

15. Katrina gave an excuse to redevelop NO on a massive scale with

taxpayer money. The greed was always there.

[Gormy Cuss]

18. My, you are a cynic....

just like me. There is no economic advantage to encouraging the low income residents to come back to the valuable land adjacent to the quarter, and there are probably undervalued neighborhoods along the Lake too. I don't know the city well enough to point out any other areas. The city will love all that new tax revenue.

[despairing optimist]

13. About ten feet below sea level

The soil will be polluted, so anyone eating fruit or vegetables grown on it will likely be at statistically great risk for all sorts of illness. Jobs don't grow as fast as tomatoes, though, so if people want to return, they should be willing to work in the booming homebuilding and renovation businesses. Tourists and conventioneers may or may not return, though restoring hotels and convention facilities are probably top priority--I'd certainly visit to do my part to help NO recover, but I think that despite everyone's best wishes and actions, it won't suffice to replace the jobs lost, the small restaurants and other shops closed down. Where is the seed money going to come from if few businesses and homeowners had flood insurance?

Stores, schools, and neighborhoods don't grow on trees. There's no "there" there anymore, and the few areas that escaped the worst damage still have to contend with their relationship with the many more areas that were devastated. There's a certain amount of serendipity or spontaneous combustion that gives a divine spark to city life, and I fear that it may have been extinguished. The people with that spark will move on to other communities, and who can blame them? It's hard to start over, but it's even harder to return to less than nothing and make it into something.

[newswolf56]

16. Don't think the city will ever be rebuilt. This talk of "rebuilding"...

is typical post-disaster denial bolstered by pro-Bush propaganda. And with gas already above $5 in Atlanta, it will undoubtedly go higher as the shortage worsens: $7, maybe even $10 a gallon. This will destroy the U.S. economy. Again there will be talk of "rebuilding," and again it will be denial and propaganda: an economy already shrunken by outsourcing, downsizing, wage reduction, take-backs, pension looting and destruction of the social safety net is not an economy the oligarchy has any intention of rebuilding.

[ktowntennesseedem]

20. Oh, but I'm sure we can rebuild...

with all the outpouring of money and support from France and Germany... and don't forget, POLAND!!! :sarcasm:

[kskold]

24. typical post-disaster doom-and-gloom

I believe after 9/11 that it was generally conceded that NYC would no longer be the financial center of the US. Too risky.

After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, it was generally believed - outside of San Francisco - that the City was gone forever.

New Orleans is too important for too many people for too many different reasons to be allowed to die.

The state of the economy may hinder and delay the rebuilding - but I do not believe that anything will prevent it. Likewise the generosity or stinginess of the federal government will only affect the pace not the reality of the reconstruction.

And if you must call me on this, say that I'm naive and over-optimistic, NOT that I'm spreading pro-Bush propaganda. I believe this because I believe that the spirit of the people of New Orleans will demand rebuilding. New Orleans is a special place and I do not believe that Bush, or anyone else, could *prevent* the rebuilding.

Kristen
not new, just quiet

[newswolf56]

26. Something new called New Orleans may be built -- in fact...

I have no doubt it will (if only for the port facilities). But the old city is gone forever: it's now part of Lake Ponchartrain, which as soon as the Mississippi River dikes are undercut will be simply a huge slough.

Understand you're "not spreading Bush propaganda." But I don't think you understand the geological/hydrological absolutes of what has happened, also the pestilence-hole the marsh that was New Orleans will soon become as the thousands of corpses begin to fester: diseases we have not seen in the United States for a century or more: epidemic cholera, typhoid, who knows what else. The disease problem alone will render the old city uninhabitable for years.

[Catbird]

17. You don't mess with the Mississippi

It has been attempting to change its course for some time now. It has been kept back temporarily by human effort. Is it really worth the money it would cost to rebuild New Orleans, as opposed to resettling in some less vulnerable place? This is what FEMA's Project Impact (which the current administration killed) was trying to do, although usually on a smaller scale.

[TahitiNut]

22. Remember global warming -- the waters are rising.

Not only is New Orleans subsiding, the waters around New Orleans are rising. Katrina is merely one of a whole sorority that'll come visiting the Mississippi River Delta region in the coming years. "Venice"?? Nonsense. Northern Italy doesn't get hurricanes or the kind if tidal forces seen in the Gulf.

By far, the hugest impediment to river rerouting and lowland abandonment is the oil industry. The oil industry infrastructure in that area are humongous. Ironically enough, they'll probably rake in far more profits from this disater than they'll ever give back in subsidies or lose through destruction.

[jody]

25. "New Orleans subsiding"? Is that affected by pumping oil from

subterranean reservoirs?

[TahitiNut]

27. Nope. It's a natural process on water-soaked sedimentary "land."

Water doesn't merely "flow" over land ... it flows through aquifers, strata, and the sedimentary regions of major river deltas. That "flow" would help naturally extend the delta over aeons, except the river is contained, so surface deposition is inhibited. Thus, we get subsidence.

Disclaimer: I'm not a geologist.

Here's a brief precis from a geologic site ...

Subsidence a type of mass movement that involves principally a downward movement/ displacement of surface material caused by natural or artificial removal of underlying support. It is the net sum of tectonic activity, isostatic adjustment, sediment compaction, fluid withdrawal and sea level rise. Most deltaic areas experience relatively great subsidence balanced by large input of river borne sediments under natural conditions. If the river is channelled, diverted or damaged, subsidence may be uncompensated. In some areas groundwater withdrawal can lead to accelerated consolidation of subsurface materials and hence increase subsidence.

This abstract offers a decent perspective, as well - http://apt.allenpress.com/aptonline/?request=get-abstract&issn=0749-0208&volume=014&issue=03&page=0698

We'd be far, far better off if the entire Mississippi RIver Delta were designated "wetlands" and development were prohibited, imho. But, like I once heard when I was on the wrong side of a Thruway, "you can't get there from here."

[mikelewis]

23. Chinapas - The only hope for New Orleans

The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was built in a swampy marsh in the middle of a lake. They sunk huge baskets of earth in the lake and planted thier gardens and built thier city. It was something similar to Venice in that it had rivers as main streets. If New Orleans thinks it can rebuild without solving the erosion problem, they're wrong. Their only hope is to either move to solid land or build chinapas. Either way, I'm pretty sure New Orleans is gone for now.