Louisiana has spoken: more planning, please

Louisiana appears to be on the verge of its most ambitious planning in decades.

In May the “Louisiana Speaks” process — 18 months of consultation organized by Calthorpe Associates and Fregonese Calthorpe Associates — concluded after more than 27,000 people voiced their opinions about the state’s future. Now the state government is responding.
The Louisiana Recovery Authority, a state agency, adopted the Louisiana Speaks plan in May. A month later the legislature took the next step, voting to establish a task force to deal with the recommendations. “This is the starting gate,” said Hal Cohen, planning director for the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX), which sponsored the privately funded planning exercise. “There’s going to be a very long and challenging road ahead of us.”    CPEX, with money from foundations, had Joe DiStefano of Calthorpe Associates lead discussions throughout southern sections of the state after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, focusing on how to recover and how Louisiana should chart its course over the next 50 years.
A key recommendation is that the state, parish (county), and municipal governments provide much more support for planning than they have in the past. “Prior to Katrina and Rita, the whole concept of planning — of looking strategically at outcomes, other than in transportation — was not a priority,” said Boo Thomas, president and CEO of CPEX. “The storms gave us the impetus to look at planning, not just in transportation but also in land use, risk management, economic development, and equity issues.”
The Louisiana Speaks report calls for establishing a state planning office that would supply expertise to parish and municipal governments that lack it. The office could send professional planners to work temporarily in governments that do not have an adequate staff and that request assistance. The state office would also help governments implement “best practices,” by drawing up documents such as a model zoning code that local governments could adopt either piecemeal or in its entirety.
Some municipalities have no planners on staff. Even among the five regional planning agencies in southern Louisiana, “their sophistication and capacity vary significantly,” DiStefano said. “The idea is for the state to elevate their capacity,” possibly developing a pool of planning staff that would circulate through the regions.
A primary strategy advocated by Louisiana Speaks is: “Develop and invest smarter by focusing investment in existing cities and towns and by building new mixed-use, walkable communities coordinated with transportation and protection infrastructure.” Comprehensive plans “would be required for large or growing localities, with matching funding and technical support provided.” Planning would remain a local prerogative, but the localities’ plans would be coordinated at the regional level.
    DiStefano thinks acceptance of increased planning will require both carrots and sticks. Sticks include rules and mandates. Carrots include help for communities in building their capacity through training, funds, and data. “Louisiana Speaks lays out reams of regional data,” he noted.
    From the winds and floods of 2005 has come “the potential to move the state in a significantly different direction” and to shift development patterns, DiStefano believes.

The state’s initial responses
Among the actions taken since the hurricanes:
• Governor Kathleen Blanco created a Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) to coordinate coastal restoration and the protection of structures. CPRA’s methods include reinforcement of barrier islands, stabilization of the coastline, restoration of wetlands, and strengthening and maintenance of levees. These are meant to provide “multiple lines of defense.”
• Levee boards have been upgraded and consolidated.
• The state adopted the International Building Code statewide. Many places previously had no building codes.
Cohen at CPEX expects commuter rail service to be established between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It would help deliver a needed workforce to New Orleans, provide an alternative to “ridiculously congested” highways, and bolster areas around the stations, he said. The state Department of Transportation and Development has $24 million available for the rail system and needs another $56 million to operate it for three years, according to Cohen.
Governments in Louisiana have an incentive to engage in good planning, he said, because “smart growth, safer growth” — in established communities possessing adequate protection and in logical places such as high ground — will encourage insurance companies to return and will stimulate private investment.
One Louisiana Speaks recommendation is that experts and stakeholders “classify land based on sustainability, then link the developed rules to a map database for identifying appropriate locations for conservation, reinvestment, and future development.” Areas identified as high-risk would require a special state permit before development. The likelihood of that recommendation being adopted is unclear.
Regional polls found that when people were asked to choose between emphasizing property rights and using regulations and incentives to reduce the community’s risk, large majorities favored reducing the risk. The polls also found large majorities in favor of focusing development in existing areas or modifying existing patterns rather than continuing the development patterns of recent years.
To more accurately reflect the danger posed by a 100-year flood, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has revised the maps used by the national flood insurance program. In some places, this will result in buildings having their living quarters 18 feet above the ground. Louisiana Speaks called for “common-sense exceptions,” such as allowing a building if it can tolerate water and then dry out or if it’s designed so that part of it can wash away, Cohen said.
FEMA’s demand that houses in New Orleans be raised three feet strikes many observers as nonsensical, since the city is supposed to be protected from flooding; that’s the purpose of the levee system — which needs to be improved.
Louisiana Speaks presents the upgrading of planning in southern Louisiana as possibly the beginning of better planning statewide. Thomas said her experiences around the state reinforce that view. “We took our road show to northern Louisiana,” she noted, “and they were very receptive.” Louisiana Speaks, Thomas suggested, may end up being the first phase of a statewide plan. The plan is at www.louisianaspeaks.org.