I think Hastert and our FReeper Clemenza are right, between them. Clemenza suggested just keeping the Quarter and the Garden District, and rebuilding the rest elsewhere.
I think that's a great idea. Conserve the scenic part as a sort of park/casino/rec area, and create a new city on more stable and higher ground. This could be a chance for our architects and builders to really shine. DC was a planned city (well, not the slum part), and I think the new NO could be a real gem of a city if we got some good, creative architects and planners into this.
Frankly, I think it's a pity the Quarter wasn't washed flat. What a rickety old slum of a place! I think New Orleans should be considered a port, period. Rebuild all the infrastructure around the Mississippi and let the rest revert to the wetlands it would have always been had it not for the ignorant Frenchman, Bienville, who thought building a city between an enormous lake and the largest river on the continent, with the Gulf on your front doorstep, was a good idea.
I think that's a great idea. Conserve the scenic part as a sort of park/casino/rec area, and create a new city on more stable and higher ground. This could be a chance for our architects and builders to really shine. DC was a planned city (well, not the slum part), and I think the new NO could be a real gem of a city if we got some good, creative architects and planners into this.
I agree 100%. The history and culture potentially lost is one of the heartbreaking things about this disaster--save it if possible, but there is no sense putting more people in the path of another tragedy and putting good money after bad.
In any case, they say that the conditions are right for more hurricanes--warmer waters in the Atlantic--but this reconstruction will take years. Is there some reason that any sane person will invest or buy a home there if another hurricane strikes while they're still cleaning up?
Either fill it up or move it.