Don't rebuild New Orleans

We shouldn't rebuild New Orleans. Not the part that was underwater.

At the risk of seeming unkind, the geography of New Orleans makes it the stupidest place in America for people to live.

It's a bowl below sea level, between two bodies of water that flood often, and it's in hurricane country. Anybody with an IQ above room temperature can see what that if we rebuild this will happen again.


It was flooded about 36 years ago by hurricane Betsy.

It will be flooded again by another hurricane sometime in the future.

So why rebuild? Why let another tragedy like the current Katrina tragedy happen again?

We will never see a better opportunity to make this area a non-housing area. The people are already relocated. The property is already mostly destroyed. Some estimates are that 95% of the flooded buildings will have to be demolished due to contamination and toxic mold.

There are a couple of possibilities we can consider.

Declare the flooded area a National Memorial Park. Plant trees and flowers, put in camp grounds and nature walks.

Or...

Make it a major convention center. Put in hotels, and convention centers, and ball parks, all built on raised mounds above the water line. Throw in a few casinos, too. Sour round these buildings with the kind of beautiful gardens and parks only the south is capable of growing.

It is much easier to evacuate a few tens of thousands of tourists who have someplace else to go, than to evacuate hundreds of thousands of home owners who don't want to leave, and have nowhere else to go.

Any truly historic or beautiful buildings that should be preserved can be raised above sea level where they sit or moved to a raised area with other historic houses. Another tourist attraction!

While I lean toward the latter, "convention center area". One or the other must be done.

Either could be a huge boost to New Orleans. Imagine a city with it's own national park just minutes away from down town. A sort of Central Park New Orleans Style. This could bring tourists, new business, a whole new attitude for New Orleans.

Even better the Convention Center Area would do all that and bring in billions of dollars of convention business to New Orleans. Not to mention the jobs created in those hotels and restaurants.

What about the former residents? Their houses and businesses can be bought by the government through Eminent Domain, to make the National Park, or by the businesses that build in the new convention mecca.

Many of those former residents will find new lives where they were evacuated to and simply chose not to go back.

Many learned their lesson by nearly dying in this disaster and have sworn not to go back.

The ones who do go back will simply have to find a place to live that doesn't require you and me to rescue them every 30 years or so. A place where they can live without loosing half their family every thirty years or so.

Seems like a pretty logical thing to me.