The Oil Drum

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission has released a master plan for the rebuilding of the city (Powerpoint, PDF courtesy of NPR). Most of the news coverage of the plan focuses on the controversial process that determines which neighborhoods will be rebuilt. But the plan also embraces transit-oriented development and other new urbanist concepts.

I've excerpted some of the key slides and figures below the fold. Do their ideas have merit? Will they ever get implemented?

We end this little three-part photo-essay on where New Orleans is up to with the brightest spot: the French Quarter. I took these shots on New Year's Day.

Shoppers in the French Quarter flea market. Click picture to enlarge.

Driving around New Orleans, the true impact of the hurricanes, particularly if one then heads down the Mississipi, has been both more surprisingly upbeat, and breathtakingly worse than one got from the television news.  The upbeat part comes from the number of houses with sheetrock or wall panels or furniture stacked outside, ready to be hauled away.  This was much more prevalent than I had expected and if someone has done this (and especially if they have also mowed the lawn) then one can expect that they will be restoring the current house.  Each neighborhood was different, however, and there were a number of places where we saw families just sitting, not sure where to start, or what to do next - many in despair.

But there is a strong sense that the town is coming back, you can get red beans and rice on Bourbon Street (it being Monday) - even though it is in a plastic container, because they prefer to use the limited power to cool the beer, rather than run dishwashers.  And there were some tourists and shops were beginning to open.  In part that is also true of the nearby oil industry,  the oil pipelines are now largely checked and in good shape, and there were three workboats down at Venice that seemed to be stocking up and ready to head back out into the Gulf, and to begin rebuilding the oil supply infrastructure out there.  Not that there is not a lot that has to be done.