- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
There is general agreement that to call New Orleans home means “living with danger, dangerously,” as William Barry put it. You’re “relieved when you dodge the big one, but the big one was always going to come,” says Lawrence Jenkens. So now that it has come, what next?
There’s a consensus here that much is salvageable—even in the most flooded areas of the city. Ellen Weiss worries about “the impulse to bulldoze and start from scratch with a fantasy solution,” because so many of New Orleans “shotgun neighborhoods” are underappreciated historically and architecturally. John Klingman disputes the notion that the city is “gone or fine—it’s everything in between.” Many of the older buildings are made of old growth cypress from drained swampland—an extremely resilient wood that could “endure or be reused in many ways.” But, he says, the people are in limbo, and the infrastructure and rules are broken. The question is how to “balance repopulating with good planning.” Richard Tuttle wonders if large sections of the city’s outlying wetlands should be off limits to development and “brought back as natural resources.” This would raise hackles in the petroleum industry, he notes. And while tourism is a top priority, William Barry worries that rebuilding can put “authenticity of place at risk.” John Klingman suggests sidestepping preservation issues by constructing 100 new schools, and replacing a debilitated education system with one attractive to all economic groups. Richard Tuttle would like to see “unemployed workers learn trades and be at the center of rebuilding,” but frets that Washington will cater to large and powerful financial and political interests. “This is potentially a great moment, but as someone who lives there, I’ve become cynical,” he says.Related Videos
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October 18, 2005
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Rebuilding New Orleans
Kristina Ford
October 17, 2005
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How Can Communities, Cities and Regions Recover From Disaster?
Lawrence Vale, Thomas Kochan and J. Thompson
October 5, 2005
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Lawrence J. Vale SM '88
Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT School of Architecture and Planning
Margaret MacVicar FellowLawerence Vale is the author or editor of six books examining urban design and housing. Architecture, Power, and National Identity (1992), a book about capital city design on six continents, received the 1994 Spiro Kostof Book Award for Architecture and Urbanism from the Society of Architectural Historians. Vale is also Co-Editor, with Sam Bass Warner, Jr., of Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 2001), and co-editor, with Thomas J. Campanella, of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005), which was recognized as one of the “Ten Best Books for 2005” by Planetizen, the Planning and Development network.
He attended Amherst College, and received the S.M.Arch.S. degree from MIT and a D.Phil from the University of Oxford. He has been a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as the recipient of the 1997 Chester Rapkin Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He has taught at the MIT since 1988.Gary Van Zante
Curator of Architecture & Design, MIT Museum
John Klingman
Professor of Architecture, Tulane University Architectural Advisor, Historic District Landmarks Commission, New Orleans
William Barry
Senior Associate, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott Architects, Boston Boardmember, Boston Preservation Alliance
Richard Tuttle
Professor of Art History, Tulane University
Lawrence Jenkens
Professor of Art History, University of New Orleans
Ellen Weiss
Professor of Architecture, Tulane University
Moderator
Speakers
- About the Host
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About the Host
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is a department within the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. It is comprised of four specialization areas (also referred to as Program Groups): City Design and Development; Environmental Policy and Planning; Housing, Community and Economic Development; and the International Development Group. There are also three cross-cutting areas of study: Transportation Planning and Policy, Urban Information Systems (UIS), and Regional Planning.
Video Player
Voices from New Orleans: Design and Planning Diaspora
- Moderator: Lawrence J. Vale SM '88
- Gary Van Zante
John Klingman
William Barry
Richard Tuttle
Lawrence Jenkens
Ellen Weiss - October 3, 2005
- Running Time: 1:21:10
