+ From: "Architexturez." <interface.services@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 19:15:30 +0530
Gone with the wind
Since hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans almost a year ago, the population has halved. Amid the debris and regret, Gary Younge finds a city losing its soul
Saturday July 29, 2006
The Guardian
...
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the reality of the third-world conditions in which many in the world's wealthiest nation live was literally washed up for the world to see.
As tens of thousands of people converged on the convention centre, Fema's Michael Brown said, "We're seeing people that we didn't know exist." Rarely a truer word had been spoken. Indeed, these were people the nation's establishment had long tried to forget. New Orleanians who want the city to return to the state it was in before the hurricane are hard to come by. Before Katrina, you were 10 times more likely to be murdered and three times more likely to be robbed in New Orleans than in the rest of the US. It was a city renowned for corruption, where child poverty rates stood at 40% and levels of illiteracy were not far behind.
To be in the Crescent City that week after Katrina was like seeing what Haiti would look like with skyscrapers. By the end of the week, people were climbing into helicopters with no idea where they were heading but just pleased to be getting out. Many remain wherever they were dropped off.
Everybody has a story from those few days. Steve Pistorius was on tour in Japan when the storm struck and thought, because the hurricane had veered east, that the city and his nine cats and dogs had been spared. "I was getting on the plane when I saw Ray Nagin on CNN saying the 17th Street levees had been breached and the city will be flooded with 15 feet of water. I just started crying." Antoinette K-doe had hunkered down in the Mother-In-Law lounge, the club in Treme where her late husband would play and she would cook gumbo, red beans and smothered okra. When young hoodlums came to loot the lounge for booze, Antoinette held up her sawn-off shotgun and gave them a warning: "I don't think you want to come to the Mother-In-Law lounge. Not now, not ever." They didn't need to be told twice.
....
cont'd....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,,1831459,00.html
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(image) A woman walks through the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, May 2006. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty
Since hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans almost a year ago, the population has halved. Amid the debris and regret, Gary Younge finds a city losing its soul
Saturday July 29, 2006
The Guardian
...
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the reality of the third-world conditions in which many in the world's wealthiest nation live was literally washed up for the world to see.
As tens of thousands of people converged on the convention centre, Fema's Michael Brown said, "We're seeing people that we didn't know exist." Rarely a truer word had been spoken. Indeed, these were people the nation's establishment had long tried to forget. New Orleanians who want the city to return to the state it was in before the hurricane are hard to come by. Before Katrina, you were 10 times more likely to be murdered and three times more likely to be robbed in New Orleans than in the rest of the US. It was a city renowned for corruption, where child poverty rates stood at 40% and levels of illiteracy were not far behind.
To be in the Crescent City that week after Katrina was like seeing what Haiti would look like with skyscrapers. By the end of the week, people were climbing into helicopters with no idea where they were heading but just pleased to be getting out. Many remain wherever they were dropped off.
Everybody has a story from those few days. Steve Pistorius was on tour in Japan when the storm struck and thought, because the hurricane had veered east, that the city and his nine cats and dogs had been spared. "I was getting on the plane when I saw Ray Nagin on CNN saying the 17th Street levees had been breached and the city will be flooded with 15 feet of water. I just started crying." Antoinette K-doe had hunkered down in the Mother-In-Law lounge, the club in Treme where her late husband would play and she would cook gumbo, red beans and smothered okra. When young hoodlums came to loot the lounge for booze, Antoinette held up her sawn-off shotgun and gave them a warning: "I don't think you want to come to the Mother-In-Law lounge. Not now, not ever." They didn't need to be told twice.
....
cont'd....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,,1831459,00.html
--------------------------------------------------------
(image) A woman walks through the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, May 2006. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty
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Partial thread listing:
- cities, reduced: New Orleans after almost a year!, Architexturez.
- cities: Work on Metro project initiated (Uttar Pradesh), Architexturez-IN
- city centres: Is there hope for our cities? (PH), Architexturez
- The city of VEMA is in the Internet, Architexturez.
- closed-sourced architecture: Displaying a chair does not infringe its copyright, says Advocate General [EU], Architexturez-IN