Comments on: And after the National Guard in New Orleans…??? http://www.polimom.com/2006/06/20/and-after-the-national-guard-in-new-orleans/ I used to be in the middle, but they keep moving the line! Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:36:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Ed T. http://www.polimom.com/2006/06/20/and-after-the-national-guard-in-new-orleans/#comment-9854 Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:51:09 +0000 http://www.polimom.com/2006/06/20/and-after-the-national-guard-in-new-orleans/#comment-9854 Unfortunately, I am not sure that N'awlins will ever recover. It appears to be the "perfect storm" of an inept government, horrible location, decades of inattention to basic social needs, and a citizenry hell-bent on cutting off their nose to spite their face - but with such poor aim they slice through their own necks instead! I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be best to leave the Quarter, the universities, the Garden District, the cemetaries, and lower Canal street intact - and dynamite/bulldoze everything else. Level it to the ground, then build from the ground up a new city, like they had to do in many places in Europe (Rotterdam comes to mind) and Japan (Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, anyone?) after WWII. I know it sounds cold-hearted, but we are likely to see other cities hammered like this in the future (San Francisco and Seattle/Tacoma come to mind), and we really need to make plans for how to handle the recovery ahead of time. As to your "thoughts", I think they are not only applicable to New Orleans, they could be implemented in any urban area with a large enough population of un/underoccupied <strong>YSFoM</strong> ("Young Skulls Full of Mush", or what you would refer to as teenagers.) More and more school districts are requiring some amount of community service as a pre-requisite for graduation, and that certainly falls within the mission of the schools to prepare the YSFoM for adulthood. <em>~EdT.</em> Unfortunately, I am not sure that N’awlins will ever recover. It appears to be the “perfect storm” of an inept government, horrible location, decades of inattention to basic social needs, and a citizenry hell-bent on cutting off their nose to spite their face - but with such poor aim they slice through their own necks instead!

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be best to leave the Quarter, the universities, the Garden District, the cemetaries, and lower Canal street intact - and dynamite/bulldoze everything else. Level it to the ground, then build from the ground up a new city, like they had to do in many places in Europe (Rotterdam comes to mind) and Japan (Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, anyone?) after WWII. I know it sounds cold-hearted, but we are likely to see other cities hammered like this in the future (San Francisco and Seattle/Tacoma come to mind), and we really need to make plans for how to handle the recovery ahead of time.

As to your “thoughts”, I think they are not only applicable to New Orleans, they could be implemented in any urban area with a large enough population of un/underoccupied YSFoM (”Young Skulls Full of Mush”, or what you would refer to as teenagers.) More and more school districts are requiring some amount of community service as a pre-requisite for graduation, and that certainly falls within the mission of the schools to prepare the YSFoM for adulthood.

~EdT.

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