Future of NOLA, haunting, cajun, tragic, and never to return

[bluedawg12]

New Yorker guy on Charlie Rose- NOLA people believe
that they have been pushed out of NOLA, they are not wanted, they know they will never return ( the poor) and that the rupture of the levee's was somehow part of a planned gentrification.

Their memory goes back to 1927 when certain levee's were blown up to save the city and the poor neighborhoods were sacrificed.

He is saying that the resurrection of the city as it was, is improbable. The city was poor, had no corporate headquarters, no property tax base and that people were leaving for years. Slowly leaving. He paints a picture of a dying city whose main business was tourism, which can be replaced by Vegas or NY.

But the diaspora of the poor is probably permanent.

This counter narrative, arising out of poverty, the rumors with -in the poor sectors, reflective of the displacement, sorrow, poverty, and powerlessness of the people of NOLA.

This is much sadder than even I knew until I heard this tonight.

I feel really, really saddened that the life those people led will never come back.
A sorrow as must have been felt when Alexandria was lost to the sea.
We are seeing the end of a historical era, a time and place that was not of 21st century chrome, petrol, microchip America. A place of dark cultures, strange mores, cults, and voodoo, who do you do, voodoo. African roots at surface, Cajun roots for all to see, the food, the smells, the music in the air. A wild theme park for repressed adults who can act out in ways there, as no where else


Author: David Remnick: High Water,The New Yorker.

Sad end of great city and wonderful people who will, as a subculture, be no more.:cry:

[jobycom]

1. Eh, i don't agree with that.

I think it will return in much the same form. New Orleans is more than a tourist town. It is also a major port and an oil town. Not like Houston, but still heavily reliant on the oil industry.

And it's not isolated. Baton Rouge is a forty minute drive, and there are a lot of smaller towns to the south and around the lake. South of NOLA are a lot of small industry towns, from sulfur mining (or extraction or whatever you do to sulfur) to seafood to oil to agriculture. Those towns are largely still there, and New Orleans is a perfect outlet for much of their produce. Also, it is the support system for many of these towns and the rural areas.

So people will return to New Orleans, because there is still a role for that town in that place, especially because of its port. And the types of industry that will return will be low paying menial jobs. A lot of people will return to the area because the economy will require it. The jobs may even generate better wages, since it will take some incentive to get people back.

So the people surrounding NOLA are still there, much of what the economy was based on will still be there, and the whole tourist mystique of New Orleans will still be there. People grow attached to their homes. A lot of people will return. Mardi Gras doesn't work as well other places. Jazz doesn't sound as good. There aren't many other places poor musicians can play jazz on street corners.

It will take a decade or more, and what returns will necessarily be different. My home town, Gulfport, shows this. It has been decimated by hurricanes every thirty to forty years. Each time it rebuilds something drastic changes, but the changes create points of interest for the people to rebuild around. The same spirit returns. The seawall was the result of a hurricane destroying the coastland (it used to be a winding coastline, not the straight beach it is now). The building patterns were the results of hurricanes. Each change brought something interesting. A non hurricane change were the casinos. The Coast was as poverty stricken as any place in America before the casinos opened in the 90s. Then, money poured in, and the whole look of the beach changed. But not its character. It was still built on tourism. The tourist traps had just gotten bigger and gaudier.

New Orleans will rebuild like that. The government will pump money into the region to try to engineer the new economy, but that will fail. The economy will be shaped by the people, by economic necessities, not government spending. Eventually the city will take its own shape. The whole Disneyfication of NOLA, something that's been happening for years anyway, will only progress so far, because of economic realities. People don't want to see a Disney New Orleans, or they'd go to Disney World. They want to see the real thing. The fake places will fail, and the real ones will emerge.

It won't happen overnight. But it will be back.

[bluedawg12]

2. The poor will not return. Gentrification.

Oil companies, and the expensive homes of their managers and execs.

It's prime property, there will be big business that will raise huge high rises.

It won't be Disney, it will be more like Atlanta.

The homes of the poor are dmaged and are being bulldozed as we write this.

The poor say they don't beleive they can ever (afford) to return to the New- New Olreans.

If we can't get the original, soulful people back- it will be just another commercial city near an inland waterway port town with ocean access. New town houses will spring up, and waterfront properties.

But the heart and the soul of the town, those people who in an almost bibilical sense have been cast out of NOLA.

[jobycom]

4. Government and corporations can't control economic necessity

They may want a pretty, clean city. That doesn't mean they'll get what they want.

[AndyTiedye]

7. Would Affluent People and Corporate HQ's WANT to be in the Flood Zone?

That is why the poor could afford to live there in the first place,
because that land is the most vulnerable to hurricanes and floods.
Those who could afford to live on higher ground usually did so.

[losdiablosgato]

9. I work in Houston and my company moved many of the the people from NO

to Houston. Most DO NOT want to go back. The standard of living is higher and the cost of living is lower. A lot of NO"S people will not come back.

[kestrel91316]

3. I disagree - NOLA and her people will rise again. Not the same,

but BETTER. Smaller, more compact, but every bit NOLA.

Sometimes you just gotta BELIEVE.

[windbreeze]

6. or face reality, perhaps...???

This didn't happen for no reason...the missing aid was not coincidental...coincidences like that don't happen...coincidences don't happen..and what about those who swear they heard explosions the day AFTER Katrina, when the levees hadn't broke yet, and then they did? Even IF there weren't explosions, the funds to maintain those same levees were denied by the stroke of bush's pen, even though a computer simulated program was introduced last year that showed what would happen if a cat 4/5 hit NOLA...How about all those poor being sent to camps...??? We saw the pictures on this venue..we saw the wire, we read the stories that said the camps were in remote areas, and the people weren't allowed to leave, and had armed guards, and how they are scattered everywhere, how people tried to help, traveling 125 miles to leave fresh fruit, clothing, etc., that was turned down..IS anyone going to remember them, or miss them, when they are stretched from Maine to California? How are they supposed to get back to NO, when most of them were too poor to leave?..I was reading just today, an article about this city perhaps being rebuilt, but the poor areas probably won't be...the areas that flooded, will be used for other things..oh, parts of it will be rebuilt all right...for the rich folk (remember, Trent Lott's house has to be bigger and better than before, so * can sit on his porch and drink mint juleps with him)..the desired elite will definitely benefit..and the poor? well, hell, they're on their own...
windbreeze

[baron j]

5. It will rise up, like the vampires who populate it

in popular fiction.

[jokerman93]

8. Cultures have a way

Cultures have a way of adapting to epochal changes. I can't (and wouldn't want to) articulate the revulsion I feel every time I think of Katrina and the crimes that led to the NOLA diaspora. I have hope though that the various NOLA cultures will have a positive influence on all parts of the U.S. that are privileged to host them. And maybe they'll evolve too as a characteristically vital response to this tragic and egregious crime that has been committed.

There will be Blues from this, and there is no music so full of Human truth as our Delta Blues. It's the twenty-first century. We've all witnessed the worst that can happen now, and the ones who were sacrificed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina won't be forgotten.