It is a widespread fact that hindsight is 20/20, but at what cost? New Orleans has been around since the beginning of the eighteenth century with the Mississippi River winding around it like a noose, Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Yet it was designed and laid out below sea level. Sure, they have a state of the art, best in the world, pumping system, but hasn't the last 72 hours, between the storm surge and breaks in the levee system, proven anything? Under 20 feet of water (as of this writing, 2 days after the Katrina paid a visit) and still rising. Nearly an entire city is left homeless and the rest of the country will soon be suffering economically.
But all of that destruction aside, what happens next? The entire city will have to be rebuilt. The question is: how? According to the pictures and videos on the news reports, just about every single home north of downtown is completely submerged and will have to be torn down. Street after street after street is looking more like the lost city of Atlantis than a bustling modern day metropolis. When the rebuilding begins, will the same mistakes be made? Will the philosophy of "Katrina was the 'Big One'" make developers and the people of New Orleans make the same mistake twice?
The World Trade Center's construction not only changed New York City's skyline, but also the geographical layout of Manhattan Island itself. The World Financial Center and much of Battery Park City is literally built ontop of The Hudson River, the foundation being landfill excavated from the WTC during construction (the picture on the right shows the Hudson and it's piers coming right up to the West Side Highway, where the World Financial Center and it's three towers now stand). The Marina District in San Francisco also stands on faux ground, built ontop of the the rubble and garbage piled up and left behind from the 1906 quake.
It may be a far reaching and very costly solution for an entire city (or maybe even the more residential areas), but for a city who's infrastructure is so important to the rest of the country, this is something that should be seriously considered.
My heart goes out to all those who are suffering in New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast who have suffered Katrina's wrath. With waters continuing to rise from Lake Pontchartrain and bodies floating down the streets while other people are most likely still trapped in poorly ventilated attics waiting to be rescued, this situation seems so surreal. It's hard to believe that, in this day and age, in the world's most advance industrial country, we're slowly watching an entire city being washed away.
1 comment:
Agreed.. Unbelievable..
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