Your parking lots or your lives
When we are a walkable, denser city, we won't need all those cars anyway
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Jason Henderson
For three months, we've heard engineers and politicians sing the praises of the stormprotection system built by tiny, low-lying Holland. As a New Orleans native and
professor of urban geography focused on land use and transportation debates, I appreciate
what I have recently learned about that country, which operates in some ways quite
differently than we do here.
In Holland, land-use policy directs where growth can occur. Dense, compact cities are
respected, and mass transit, bicycling and walking are considered practical and dignified
ways of getting around.
In Holland, the approach toward human-environment interaction, including flood control,
land use and transportation policy, is holistic.
If New Orleans is to survive the next hurricane, its citizens must reflect and learn from
this disaster in a holistic way. But unfortunately, the overall debate about how much of
the city to rebuild is degenerating into a debate between reducing the footprint and
population and simply rebuilding everything. It has degenerated into ecological
stewardship vs. social justice. If left unresolved, it threatens limbo and will leave people
in the city even more exposed to future hurricanes.
From an ecological standpoint, the rebuilding debate is inextricably bound with the
mistakes of paving over surrounding backswamps with sprawl and constraining the
freshwater sediments of the Mississippi River. Land-use policy allowed much of the
backswamp -- Lakeview, Gentilly, eastern New Orleans -- to be paved over on behalf of
white families, and later middle class black families, moving away from social problems.
They moved there instead of solving tough problems (schools, crime, poverty) in the
urban core.
Ecologically, this subsiding and vulnerable backswamp sprawl should be returned to
wetlands. The pathway of the Industrial Canal should be used to send Mississippi River
sediments into the northern and eastern flanks of the city to shore up wetland defenses.
The Industrial Canal would act as a pipeline splaying mud into replenished wetlands,
which would function as storm surge buffers, stormwater runoff basins, habitat for
seafood and timber supply, and a resource for education and recreation.
Obviously this regeneration of wetlands will require relocation of thousands of New
Orleanians, both white and black, taking us back to social justice and how to balance it
with ecological stewardship.
That balance can be achieved by building more densely -- but only moderately more so -on the less vulnerable ground along the natural levee of the Mississippi River and south
of the Metairie-Gentilly Ridge. And this can be done by maximizing development on
surface parking lots scattered throughout this part of the city.
Consider this: In a typical parking lot, the average parking space consumes 350 square
feet, 400 with landscaping. Three parking spaces, or 1,200 square feet, approach the size
of a comfortable two-bedroom home.
Today parking and streets consume upwards of 50 percent of the land area of an
American city. This leads to the question -- is New Orleans for people or cars?
Instead of providing vast acreages of parking around the high and dry Wal-mart,
attractive mid-rise, mixed-use developments should be constructed with ground-floor
retail below three or four stories of housing.
These developments would consist of inclusive housing, built with solid craftsmanship
and providing for a range of incomes and household sizes, from small efficiencies to
three-bedroom family homes.
They would respect the traditional grid and original human scale of the city, not be
characterized by garagescapes or walls of bleak high-rises.
Repeat this throughout the city, from smaller lots, such as the A&P on Magazine, to the
Winn-Dixies, Roberts and Save-a-Centers. Spread the densification using the template of
surface parking while preserving existing housing stock.
Of course, New Orleanians will need to re-orient their approach toward transportation.
The re-oriented city would be a compact, walkable, transit-oriented city with bicycling,
car-sharing, and taxis as essential components.
Passenger rail would connect the city to Baton Rouge, Armstrong Airport, and the rest of
the Southeast.
Rail would also operate as a much-needed tool for evacuation when the next storm
arrives. All of this should be funded through petroleum taxes.
Additionally, all publicly owned on-street parking throughout the city should be priced at
fair market value with revenue going to the city.
A holistic approach for ensuring a viable future for New Orleans includes rethinking
density and transportation. Building more densely on surface parking lots is one possible
balance between ecological stewardship and social justice.
.......
Jason Henderson is an assistant professor of geography and human environmental studies
at San Francisco State University. His e-mail address is jhenders@sfsu.edu.