September 01, 2005
Nothing will change...
Some hard truths from Nicole Gelinas at City Journal...
....And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure—and no aggressive media or organized citizens’ groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.I would be delighted to find out that this is wrong, but I've seen nothing to contradict it. We've seen this sort of urban death spiral before (I won't make certain observations that would be politically partisan, this isn't the time.) Unfortunately it is not politically correct to take it into account when making plans for recovery. The Bush Administration and everyone involved will be forced to act like New Orleans is just a normal city, and only needs a helping hand to get back on its feet. No one will be allowed to say that the patient was dying before the accident.The truth is that even on a normal day, New Orleans is a sad city. Sure, tourists think New Orleans is fun: you can drink and hop from strip club to strip club all night on Bourbon Street, and gamble all your money away at Harrah’s. But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within....
....How will New Orleans’ economy recover from Katrina? Apart from some pass-through oil infrastructure, the city’s economy is utterly dependent on tourism. After the city’s mainstay oil industry decamped to Texas nearly a generation ago, New Orleans didn’t do the difficult work of cutting crime, educating illiterate citizens, and attracting new industries to the city. New Orleans became merely a convention and tourism economy, selling itself to visitors to survive, and over time it has only increased its economic dependence on outsiders. The fateful error of that strategy will become clearer in the next few months.Sure, the feds must provide cash and resources for relief and recovery—but it’s up to New Orleans, not the feds, to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city’s economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities...(Thanks to Orrin Judd).
And no one will be allowed to demand reforms before trillions of dollars are poured into recovery efforts. That would be "heartless."
Posted by John Weidner at September 1, 2005 06:39 PM | TrackBackOh god, not you too! Jesus, what is it with people, did someone slip "no hope" into the water?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at September 1, 2005 07:49 PMI'm sure there's "hope" for New Orleans, because we will spend whatever is necessary to restore a semblance of normalcy. National pride demands it, and we can afford it. Hey, we're an empire!
But normalcy is not what NO needs, or so I suspect. I think the word we should be groping for is "intervention." When you see the phrase "brain drain," you can be sure there is a pathological situation.
Who knows, this may be the catalyst for a rebirth. But it isn't likely when the whole country is saying "Oh you poor helpless victims. Don't worry, we will take care of you."
Posted by: John Weidner at September 1, 2005 08:57 PMCan anyone direct me to a source that has a good explanation of the engineering problems involved? I keep hearing comments on television like, “New Orleans may be uninhabitable for several months.” Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why that is.
Isn’t work already underway to repair the most significant levees? Once those levees are repaired aren’t there pumps in place to get the water out? I certainly don’t want to make light of what they’re up against, but there seems to be something almost un-American about the response I’m seeing on TV.
We are the people who looked at the Chicago River, decided it was flowing the wrong way, and turned it around. We built the Panama Canal when others had tried and failed. Surely we can repair a handful of breached levees and pump the water out. And this being a genuine crisis situation we ought to be able to do it pretty damn quick.
After the water is removed, they will then have to remove potentially toxic debris. An engineer on PBS last night was saying what is left on the ground will have to be checked to see if its just tons of waste, which will have to cleaned up and carted somewhere, or if it will literally be toxic waste requiring careful disposal/destruction.
Need to remember too, that NOAA is predicting a strongly likelihood of 3-5 more medium to strong hurricanes still to go this season (now until November). No way to know if they will be Atlantic, Gulf, or if they will even hit the U.S.
Posted by: Zoomie at September 2, 2005 10:40 AMWell, Zoomie, while that is all very true, I'm not sure how helpful that was. For one thing, no one is saying that New Orleans will be washed clean upon being drained or that there won't be any more hurricane.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at September 2, 2005 11:53 AM
