Rebuilding New Orleans

Today the New York Times published that according to members of the mayor's building commission, residents of New Orleans are recomended to return to New Orleans and rebuild anywhere they want, no matter how trashed or vulnerable the area is. This will be released on Wednesday.

Homeowners are discouraged from returning to regions that were hit the hardest , but if they really want to, no one is going to stop them. The state commission is in favor of plans that emphasize safety and conservation. Mortgages will only be given to those who guarantee staying for longer than a year, and a light rail system and establishing New Orleans as the world center of neuroscience research are some ideas that will hopefully stimulate the city's culture and economy.

However, the fact is not all of the neighborhoods will be rebuilt. The Rand Corporation estimated that in three years the city's population will be the maximum of 275,000, over 40% less from the pre-hurricane population of 465,000.

The decision of where to rebuild is a tricky one- the most devastated and vulnerable areas were in the predominately black eastern half of the city, and the wrong decision could intensify racial conflict.

The main author of the plan, Joseph C. Canizaro, said:

"Unfortunately, a lot of poor African-Americans had everything they own destroyed here...So we have to be careful about dictating what's going to happen, especially me as a white man. What's important is we give people an opportunity to determine their future, as best we can."

There will also be a new flood control system, promised by the Bush administration. However, Michael M. Liffman, the associate executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College at Louisiana State University, said:

"There are parts of New Orleans that are not fit for human habitation, they never were and never will be. But these are as much social calls as they are scientific ones."

The rebuilding of New Orleans can be compared to the reconstruction of the south after the Civil War. The reconstruction was a period when the Confederate soutern states were brought back into the Union. After the Civil War, the south was defeated, livestock was killed, slaves were free and plantations and industries were ruins. Plantation owners had to sell portions of their land, which led to sharecropping. The south was divided into 5 military districts and all of the states were readmitted int ot he Union by 1870. Freed slaves were treated as second-class citizens and would not gain their true rights until the Civil Rights movement in tehe next centurty.