New Orleans Planning Update: The Unified New Orleans Plan
Louisiana | Op-Ed | Urban Development & Real Estate
11 December 2006 - 7:00am
Author: Robert B. Olshansky
Disaster recovery expert Robert B. Olshansky reports on the latest
planning effort in New Orleans.
Robert Olshansky
For planners, New Orleans continues to be an amazing story. To the
casual observer, it has taken a painfully long time to produce and adopt
a plan. In reality, much of this time has been necessary, in order to
identify issues, engage citizens, sort through extraordinarily
complicated political issues, and finally develop a plan that
encompasses scores of destroyed neighborhoods and an entire city's
broken infrastructure.
Over the past year, New Orleans has gone through several planning
efforts, each informing the public in its own way. The Bring New Orleans
Back Commission plan, prepared by Wallace Roberts & Todd, presented big
ideas, not all of them welcome. A neighborhood planning process, led by
planning consultant Paul Lambert, helped residents begin to think of
desired futures. The current planning process -- the Unified New Orleans
Plan (UNOP) -- builds on these efforts, fills in the gaps, identifies
citywide needs and funding sources, addresses flood risk issues, and
integrates all the neighborhood planning efforts. In January, the city
will deliver this plan to the state, in order to facilitate recovery
funding. Rather than being too slow, UNOP is proceeding far faster than
human beings were meant to do planning.
UNOP is audacious in both its scope and its absurdly short 4-month time
frame. It is being invented as it proceeds, at a pace that is
unforgiving of errors (metaphors: Ralph Thayer says it is like "building
an airplane while flying it." Steven Bingler says it is like "drinking
from a fire hose while using it to put out fires"). Dozens of planners
and architects have organized themselves into a structure of thirteen
district planning teams, coordinated through a citywide team led by
Villavaso & Associates, Henry Consulting, and disaster recovery planner
Laurie Johnson. All are proceeding simultaneously, sharing their wisdom
as quickly as they can. And, so far, the process seems to be on track.
This is news. What excites planners, however, doesn’t seem to grab the
national news media.
cont'd....
http://www.planetizen.com/node/22185
==========================
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Thursday New Orleans Community Support Organization
Board of Director’s meeting has been cancelled due to a lack of a
quorum. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused. We will
announce the reschedule date as soon as it has been set.
....
District Planning Meetings, December 15 – 16
The third round of planning meetings is scheduled across this city this
weekend in your planning district. At this meeting, planning teams will
meet with community members about the draft plan for the planning
district, and it’s an opportunity to work with your neighbors to help
shape the final district plan.
The complete schedule of district meetings can be found here. Please
share this information with your friends, family and friends, including
youth voices. We look forward to seeing you this weekend.
cont'd....
http://www.unifiedneworleansplan.com/home2/