Gentilly section of New Orleans gets its own plan

Lacking a city-initiated redevelopment plan, the Gentilly section of New Orleans took its future into its own hands in late April and sponsored a charrette led by Miami architect-planner Andres Duany. The well-attended eight-day program produced a series of recommendations for a largely working-class and middle-class area that saw its population plummet from about 45,000 before Hurricane Katrina to about 6,000 eight months later.
Among the key ideas:
• Small squares should be created in neighborhoods that currently are short on open space. Duany observed that Gentilly, which extends from north of downtown to Lake Pontchartrain, contains several large parks but not enough nearby neighborhood-scale recreational and gathering places. The plan, produced for the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association, calls for clearing some flood-damaged blocks to insert dignified public squares into the network of neighborhood streets. Owners of water-damaged houses may be offered financial incentives to move from those blocks to other lots in Gentilly.
• An approximately four-block strip-shopping area that was faring poorly before last August’s hurricane should be redeveloped as a pedestrian-scale town center, with multistory buildings containing retail, offices, and residences.
• Many of Gentilly’s single-story houses should grow upward, becoming two-story. Methods of accomplishing this would vary, depending on whether the existing house sits on a concrete slab or is supported by piers. Many pre-World War II houses built on piers can presumably be lifted higher at reasonable cost, and a new ground floor can be built under them. The ground floor would contain a garage or work rooms but not habitable space, since it’s in a flood plain. Raising a postwar house that was built on a slab usually costs too much, so some of those houses would have their ground floors converted to nonhabitable space; the roofs would be removed and new second floors would be added.
These and other changes, such as adding porches to the houses’ facades, would bring a more neighborly and urban character to an area that developed in a predominantly low-slung, suburban manner after World War II. Elevating the houses would enable them to satisfy Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommendations, which call for many dwellings in New Orleans to be raised at least three feet. Duany said it would make sense to raise the houses eight feet rather than just three. “The simple fact is, a raised home looks better, has better curb appeal when it comes to resale,” the Christian Science Monitor quoted Duany as saying.

new orleans invitation
The Civic Improvement Association’s invitation was savored by Duany and a number of other new urbanists who had wanted to work in New Orleans but had not been invited by Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission. The association didn’t have money to pay for the charrette, so Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. covered more than $150,000 in costs for about a dozen participants from the firm and for some of the expenses of approximately 40 planners, engineers, and architects from other new urbanist firms, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some of the costs may later be reimbursed by private foundations.
New Orleans’ citywide planning efforts since last August’s hurricane have repeatedly been in disarray. The municipal government ran low on money and dismissed most of its planning staff, local officials have not been up to the challenges, and, many observers say, the Bush administration has been laggard. Mayor Nagin rejected a moratorium on building permits in neighborhoods that suffered the worst devastation and that remain the most vulnerable to flooding. He also nixed the idea of giving some neighborhoods only a few months to demonstrate their viability by showing that a certain percentage of residents had returned. But positive direction has been lacking; the Bring New Orleans Back Commission’s planning efforts were cut short by a lack of federal or state funds.
Consequently, some neighborhood organizations started sponsoring their own planning efforts. Duany said Gentilly is a case study that can provide lessons for many other parts of the city and region. In Gentilly, he noted, “there are rich and poor residents, high and low ground, new and old structures.”
In April the City Council appropriated $2.9 million to pay its own team of planners, separate from the mayor’s commission. The Council’s planners, led by Lambert Advisory LLC of Miami and SHEDO LLC of New Orleans, are to produce redevelopment plans for 49 flooded neighborhoods. They are expected to fold into their work any plans already produced by groups such as the Gentilly organization.
In addition, the Rockefeller Foundation is giving the Greater New Orleans Foundation $3.5 million to help sponsor six months of work by planners, architects, and others — led by architect Steven B. Bingler of Concordia LLC in New Orleans — that would include consultation in New Orleans planning districts and in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Dallas, and Houston, where many evacuees now live. The objective is to knit together various efforts and produce a rebuilding plan acceptable to city and state officials.
David Dixon of Goody, Clancy Associates in Boston, leader of an American Institute of Architects short-term planning effort in four New Orleans neighborhoods in May, expressed disgust at the pace and character of recovery. “The lack of federal responsibility is still, I think, a national disgrace,” he said.