Learning from St. Thomas: Community,Capital, and the Redevelopment of Public Housing in New Orleans

Current efforts to redevelop public housing in the US create new opportunities and risks for low-income residents. Although cities are able to pursue innovative strategies for combatting troubled public housing, the danger is that the interests of the residents will be subordinated to those of the local power structure—especially where public housing poses an obstacle to revitalization. This article examines the efforts to redevelop the St. Thomas Housing Development in New Orleans in order to discover the impact on residents and to evaluate prevailing theories of urban power. The case involves empowered public housing residents and powerful economic interests. Although residents of St. Thomas gained access to the pro-growth coalition pursuing revitalization of the surrounding Lower Garden District, the outcome for residents is mixed. In order to understand the constraints faced by public housing residents we must recognize how political discourse can enhance the power of the business community in urban regimes.     

Using Land Swaps to Concentrate Redevelopment and Expand Resettlement Options in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Although many researchers frame post-disaster reconstruction as an opportunity to build safer communities less vulnerable to natural hazards, widespread land use change and relocations are rare in the United States. Residents often resist relocation and attempt to recreate the city as it was before the disaster. In this study, I examine the potential of land swaps to encourage post-disaster redevelopment that is more concentrated and less vulnerable to hazards, while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. This article is based on a case study of an innovative land swap program developed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by a nonprofit housing organization, Project Home Again (PHA). PHA's land swap program concentrated redevelopment during a time of uncertain population return and expanded resettlement options for nearly 100 low- and moderate-income households devastated by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. I describe the operation of PHA's land swap program and identify three conditions that can increase the viability and impact of land swaps in other disaster recovery settings: the incorporation of land swaps into housing recovery policy; cross-sector collaboration in the implementation of land swaps; and coordination with public or quasi-public land banks.

Takeaway for practice: Land swaps can be a useful tool in disaster recovery by helping to guide redevelopment while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. Increasing the range of relocation and resettlement tools available to planners is essential as repeated extreme weather events, sea level rise, and coastal erosion threaten the habitability of more and more cities and communities.     

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

I seek to synthesize several different approaches to issues of urban land redevelopment and the built environment. The essay focuses on developments in the third and current historical wave of capitalist development. I describe the economic logic of land-use change with reference to both commercial and residential property. This logic has become intimately intertwined with global finance and this state of affairs has introduced new elements of fluidity and risk into the built environment. Issues of urban policy and the role of municipal authorities in shaping urban land markets are then considered. I describe how local government agencies increasingly pursue development projects in complex partnerships with representatives of the real-estate industry. In the second half of the paper, the overall argument is recast by reference to three important trends in regard to land-redevelopment and the built environment in third-wave cities, namely, the economic and architectural renaissance of central business districts, the widespread gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods, and the emergence of a new post-suburban phase of peripheral urban expansion.     

Designing for a Lifetime in New York and Other US Cities

In the next 30 years, the number of senior citizens in the US will increase to become larger than any other single age group. How are cities starting to prepare for this huge expansion in the numbers of over-65s? Jerry Maltz and Christine Hunter of the Design for Aging Committee of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY), aided by Eric Cohen and Susan Wright , describe how New York and other US cities are laying the necessary groundwork through the World Health Organization's Age-Friendly Cities programme, while also setting up innovative centres for senior citizens, making much-needed modifications to the physical environment and developing new approaches to affordable housing.     

Tourism in US Global Cities: A Comparison of New York and Los Angeles

Tourism has become a key component of both the Los Angeles and New York City economies and an integral part of each city's urban redevelopment efforts. Its growth has influenced each city's social structure and built environment in remarkably similar ways. We describe the economic and spatial characteristics of tourism in the two cities, focusing on its labor market effects. We find strong similarities in economic importance and some aspects of labor relations. We find differences in spatial and design consequences as well as certain labor market effects. Utilizing the general framework of regulation theory, we analyze the ways in which economic culture, local autonomy, and urban regimes contribute to the regulation of the tourism industry in the two cities. We also discuss how labor and community, and advocacy groups respond to, and in turn influence, the politics and economic culture of the cities in which they operate.     

全球性危机风险下我国东北地区新城战略规划的变革

在国家振兴东北的宏观战略指引下,当前东北老工业基地城市普遍希望借助新城开发的契机,实现城市发展顺利转型的目标和应对全球性的经济危机。以沈阳市蒲河新城为例,经济危机导致的工业产能过剩问题使得依赖第二产业的传统发展路径难以为继,严峻的就业形势使得新城的发展策略需要密切关注就业增长的问题,并且经济危机促使新城在选择发展方向时需要更为注重规避风险和集约利用土地。     

City in Suspension: New Orleans and the Construction of Ground

Underfoot, obscured from view, ground is the most fundamental material of construction and the urban landscape. As New Orleans has proved, we forget it at our peril. Shaped by the mound, the levee and most recently the pump, the ground of the Crescent City was neglected and overlooked even in areas of new development. Felipe Correa describes how, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the thorough re-evaluation of the city's ground is a prerequisite to urban reorganisation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

浅析现代城市地震火灾和减灾问题

地震火灾是地震次生灾害。只要依靠科学决策和预防,是可以在一定程度上做到减少,甚至最终完全杜绝地震火灾的发生。     

Placemaking and disaster recovery: targeting place for recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans

One of the central strategies employed by the City of New Orleans to address the challenge of disaster recovery after Hurricane Katrina was a place-based strategy of targeted investments. This strategy sought to address the twin challenges of the punctuated disaster from Katrina and the slow-motion disaster of economic decline that pre-dated the storm. We analyze the key components of the geographic targeting program in New Orleans through a case study of a particular target in the Gentilly planning district of the city. The goal of the process was to utilize reinvigorated places to both encourage community reinvestment and deal with the underlying challenge of rebuilding in a more resilient manner. Target-area resources were never fully translated into dedicated resources for project implementation. We find that weak implementation and management capacity significantly limited the effectiveness of the targeting program in meeting place-based goals.