Truemors
The original idea for living in New Orleans was sound. The native Americans and the first European settlers lived on the natural levees which never flood, even during Katrina. Living on a barrier island like Galveston? Well that's a different animal altogether. What happened regarding urban settlement after the decision to settle New Orleans is not the fault of those first settlers. My house is near one of those natural levees formed by Bayou Sauvage, a former tributary of the Mississippi River. I'm not on the highest point...I got 30 inches of flood water but 5 blocks away homes got 10 feet of water, and more. It is difficult to get homeowners insurance in those areas; even for homeowners on the natural levees, insurance costs are high and availability is scarce. So we are seeing a Darwinian selection process in the rebuilding.
New Orleans is not a bowl, it's more like a TV-dinner tray, with ridges from old river levees. Engineered structures can be built to handle storms like Katrina - the Netherlands has proved that; what happened in New Orleans was, in my opinion, criminal negligence by the Corps of Engineers and consulting engineers in the design and construction of the floodwalls and levees. We also lack intelligent leadership at all levels of government in the process of urbanization. The problem we all face is incompetence in the design, construction, maintenance and upkeep of critical infrastructure - water supply, sewerage, etc. There's a tendency to want public services without paying for them; historic urban centers decay as suburban areas begin another cycle of high-cost infrastructure that will get decades of use before they decline. It's a neoliberal economic philosophical disease.
Now we are being asked to give gamblers trillions of dollars lost in gambling side bets in the bailout swindle; better to get another WPA going to build sensible urban centers that work with nature, giving millions of people jobs who would pay taxes that could go to infrastructure upkeep. Let the bankrupt banks and money managers go bankrupt; good riddance.
The bottom line is that there needs to be awareness when challenges are being faced and when critical infrastructure systems are the only thing that separates secure living spaces from calamity. If decisions are made to take on the challenge of living in a risky place, those who come on the scene afterwards need to be cognizant what they've signed up for.
For more information on the flood protection approach in the Netherlands see http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1131866947223350.xml&coll=1 ; and http://www.asce.org/bookstore/book.cfm?book=6002 ; and http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/cserge/pub/wp/ecm/ecm_2001_06.pdf .
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