Five years after Hurricane Katrina, rebuilding New Orleans remains a complicated and long-term effort. The challenge is to retain the city's culture while bringing back tens of thousands of people. Photo by George Estreich.

This is part of TheCityFix’s series, “Cities in Flux,” about demographic shifts as a result of development, immigration, migration, politics and the environment. We look at how city planning and transportation policies respond to this movement.

How can transportation and urban development—from housing to public spaces to landscaping—repair a blighted American city?

New Orleans faces a slew of challenges, but the city is successfully capitalizing on the upheaval caused by Hurricane Katrina even with the additional economic and environmental damage caused by the more recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Part of the revitalization of the city is centered on a comprehensive recovery that considers transportation and urban planning. Last week we highlighted, in our interview with Dick Alexander of Veolia Transportation, the recent switch-over to private management of the city’s transportation system. Beyond this shift from public to private management, a number of projects are underway that may bring rebirth not only to specific neighborhoods but also to our general understanding of this unique and important American city.

New Orleans has about 43,000 abandoned homes, making it by some accounts the most blighted city in the country. But this number has decreased dramatically in the last few years. For more information on post-Katrina trends, the Brookings Institution released an overview of challenges and opportunities in the city, called “The New Orleans Index at Five.” (Download the PDF here.) The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center also has varied and in-depth figures and information about the city’s recovery.

The Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), a citizen-led framework, looks at recovery in the city through livability,  infrastructure upgrades, citizen engagement and education. The framework points out that recovery will not occur unless two key factors are understood: the rate at which residents return and the level of preparedness of the city to deal with future hurricanes. The city’s population has been declining since 1960, and UNOP implies that this is due perhaps in part to the many hurricanes that have damaged the city. The plan attempts to balance revitalization efforts by providing resources and infrastructure that will be used in the long-term and services that will successfully repopulate destroyed sections of the city.

Transportation is a Key Piece of Revitalization

A 2008 document produced by the Regional Planning Commission, Louisiana Public Health Institute, City of New Orleans Department of Public Works and the University of New Orleans Center for Urban and Public Affairs says this of the transportation in New Orleans: “The creation of an integrated, green transportation system forms the core of post-Hurricane Katrina transportation plans for New Orleans.” The city aims to “provide safe, convenient non-motorized choices for the diverse New Orleans population” centered on an active transportation network.

Similarly, a 2008 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy case study of New Orleans notes that the pre-Hurricane Katrina city boasted a modal split on par with Portland, Ore., the U.S. archetype of good walkability and community design. In 2000, 21 percent of city trips were made without cars, by bicycling, walking or the use of public transportation.  According to the report, New Orleans’ “active transportation mode share has dropped slightly” since the storm, but New Orleanians, planners and transit experts still see transportation and smart development as a cornerstone of the revitalization. Another challenge the city will have to address is the sprawling location of jobs and the general mismatch between where residents live and the locations of work.

Examples of Transit Improvements

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) found that removing much of the I-10 corridor that passes through Greater Tremé and Lower Mid-City would restore some of the vitality to the region of the city north of the French Quarter and Central Business District.  Rather than sinking $100 million into rebuilding the elevated freeway, CNU suggests removing segments of the freeway to develop a “restored urban boulevard” that would promote the economic and social rebirth of the “once-vibrant Claiborne Avenue and its surrounding communities.” The destruction of the oak-lined avenue for the expressway in the 1960s “was intimately tied to the overall decline of Claiborne’s surrounding neighborhoods and occurred against the wishes of the area’s largely disenfranchised African-American residents,” CNU says.  “Removing the elevated expressway would free up more than 50 acres for use as public neutral ground, bike paths, transit corridors,” and free up more land outside the boulevard itself for redevelopment.

Tremé, New Orleans in 2009 with the I-10 overpass in the distance. Photo by Kevin O' Mara.

In 2008, the city cut the ribbon on its first official bike lanes that run from Elysian Fields to the St. Bernard Parish. Now, there are 12.6 miles of bike lanes in the city with at least 25 more miles planned on major thoroughfares. According to the city’s Department of Public Works, state and federal recovery cash to resurface roads “has provided an unprecedented opportunity to add new paths and lanes.”

Proposed bike lanes in New Orleans.

Light rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is another project that has legislative support in the city, though Governor Bobby Jindal has yet to indicate that he supports seeking the necessary federal funding for such a project. An inter-city light rail between the capital and coastal city is projected to generate a $1.40 return for every dollar invested in the project.

Some of the plans have been in the works well before Hurricane Katrina; some simply stalled; and some to never reach construction. And, of course, many plans are newly conceived to repair the post-Katrina “Big Easy.” But transportation—connectivity and mobility—holds more meaning in a city tasked with bringing back its residents and with a history of wrenching social and environmental justice issues. With each completed project, no matter how small, the city moves forward, compared to how it was crippled largely by the inability of residents to leave their flooded city in 2005.

Decatur Street, New Orleans. Photo by Matt Wetta.

This interview is part of a bi-weekly series with sustainable transportation advocates, planners, engineers, journalists, sociologists, and other experts working to shed light on best practices and solutions from across the globe. We welcome your suggestions for future Q&As.

Veolia Transportation is a $48 billion private company that works in the United States, Canada and Europe to implement transportation solutions for cities. Its programs include private services, like shuttle, sedan and taxi services, to traditional public transit, like bus, rail and paratransit. In some cases, Veolia runs and manages the entire public transit system or, in other cases, just a component of the system. For these cases, mostly in European cities, where Veolia owns the whole system, the company is managing “operations, safety, maintenance, customer care, routes and schedules, capital planning, budgeting, employee salaries & benefits, human resources, marketing, ridership growth, grant administration, as well as all the other typical functions of a transit authority.”

In New Orleans, Veolia has opted to run the entire city’s public transportation system. The coastal city, still wrenching from issues of social and environmental justice, urban poverty and the movement of 800,000 thousand people from their original homes, is rebuilding after one of the most devastating storms in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina.  In many ways the storm has given rise to a new vision and rebirth for the region of which public transportation is a key component.

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) approved in July 2009 a unique contract with Veolia. According to the press release, “the historic agreement is based on an ambitious, phased plan to improve public transportation and mobility in New Orleans over the next ten years, as a cornerstone of the city’s continuing renewal following Hurricane Katrina.” This is the first “delegate management” program in the U.S. in which Veolia is assuming all the functions and operations including commercial risks, legal and financial components, including insurance. We interviewed Senior Vice President of Business Development Dick Alexander to learn more about this model. Alexander works to create proposals for Veolia and build partnerships.

The New Orleans RTA operates multiple modes of transit, including 93 buses, paratransit vehicles, neighborhood circulators, 10 circulator vans, and 66 New Orleans Streetcars. The systems transports more than 11.5 million passengers per year and 31,500 passengers per day.

Can you give me some background as to why you chose to own and operate public transportation in New Orleans?

Veolia Transportation is part of Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement. Veolia Transport operates in 28 countries. We provide passenger transportation for cities and counties under a contract basis. A city or county would contract with us to provide all of the transportation in a city—basically whatever it takes to operate a public transit system. In the U.S., that’s typically in the form of operations and maintenance. In San Diego, for example, we operate half of the bus system. The city provides the buses but we provide the drivers, management and run the services. We do that in about 120 locations in the U.S. and establish a price per hour for the service we provide.

In Europe, where Veolia does most of its work, it’s a slightly different model. A public policy board develops the goals of the system and then you have the implementers of that policy, which usually involves the private sector. In France, everyone below the board level is charged with implementation, marketing, planning, grant work—every aspect of creating a public transportation program. We’ve started introducing this system in the U.S. to create better systems. We think this model is superior because you allow the public policy people to focus on bigger issues and the private sector focuses on whatever the issues are from changing the modal split to a  reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, etc.

New Orleans is the first example of the private sector run model in the U.S.

What brought you to New Orleans? Weren’t you worried about the risks associated with a city undergoing so many changes?

New Orleans was unique because the post-Katrina the fleet wasn’t good. A lot of talent had left New Orleans. Facilities were still housed in trailers and there weren’t the right resources given the environment. So we introduced the Delegate Management model. We brought our resources to the city because any transit system, whether 30 or 1,000 buses, need the same thing: technology, good management, etc.

We felt we could bring the needed expertise to the table given the situation. And set out to jump start the system in New Orleans and get it back to what it was. At one point, New Orleans supported one one of the most productive systems in the country.

What made it so productive?

Ridership was high and the system was well used. There’s pretty good density in the wards and the streetcar generated a lot of ridership. But Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward and pushed people out of the urban core.

A lot of it was how to get the system back to being a good functioning system that could be part of the growth and rebuilding of New Orleans.  We saw it as opportunity that in the long run is important for the industry. It allowed us to put our intellectual stamp on the issue so we saw it as less of a risk and more an opportunity. It has turned out that way.

New Orleans after the storm in the spring of 2006. Photo by Jonna McKone

So how exactly does it work? What is your relationship with the RTA?

RTA functions as the board, develops policy, direction and where they want to see the system go.  RTA is the legal entity that oversees the delivery of the public transit system in New Orleans and Veolia gets paid on costs per hour. We advise RTA but they ultimately make the decisions about the system, not us. But we make hiring and firing decisions, we put in the infrastructure and develop the proprietary programs, etc.

So what are you looking to accomplish in New Orleans in the next ten years?

We received a stimulus to expand New Orleans’ streetcar. [A $45 million TIGER grant from U.S. Department of Transportation.] We are also working on rebranding, getting new buses on the street as well as good fiscal management.

What has the rebranding entailed?

This is a rebirth of the system and we wanted to be able to provide a new image for the RTA. We looked historically at how they branded the system. We wanted it to be customer-focused. For example, we implemented a customer comment modular. Part of the branding was creating a logo image and look, which involved new timetables, signs and colors while keeping a tie to the history and presenting something new.

I read that bus rapid transit (BRT) is in the works for New Orleans—is this the case?

We bought some articulated buses because there are a few crowded lines. But our focus for now is expanding the streetcar system. BRT is a bit far off. We currently run normal bus routes and started Lil’ Easy, a demand-based service. [Lil’ Easy runs in the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Gentilly.] After New Orleans, there were devastated neighborhoods without enough people to ride the buses, but without transit no one would move back there.  It was a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, so we came up with a cost-effective solution that connects people to bus routes in the city. It’s still in service, but has been modified since it started.

We also wanted to create forward momentum in our work in New Orleans so we tried to get something off the ground right away.

Can you talk a bit more about streetcars in New Orleans? How do they work?

The streetcars are a historic system in New Orleans. In the city we have the St. Charles Street Line that runs from the downtown central business district to a few neighborhoods. The Canal Street Streetcar is from about six years ago and goes from downtown through a major corridor to Mid-City. The Riverfront Line goes from the Convention Center to the French Quarter.

We proposed adding three more lines to connect Canal Street to Union Station (where regional buses and Amtrak come in) and what will be a future transit hub for RTA. We also would like to connect the central business district to the streetcar network on Canal Street as well as connect the convention center to hotels. The system mostly serves residents and provides access to jobs.

Have you faced any barriers to your work in the city?

It has been a very strong partnership. The Mayor’s Office has been behind it all of the way.  We have had no major roadblocks—the board is supportive and New Orleans is very interested in rebuilding its transit system.

What would you say are the biggest needs in the city regarding transportation?

I would say more of it. For public transit to work well it has to have enough mass to make it convenient. This includes frequency and capacity. Running a bus every hour into a remote part of an area will not attract people. The streetcar is so popular is because it comes every 10 to 12 minutes. I think that’s why New Orleans transit was well used in the past—because it was reliable and frequent.

What about all the changes in the city? Does that make it hard to design effective transit? Have residential patterns shifted a lot in the city?

I think there’s a lot of change here. We work with a local consultant that does a lot of demographic work and shows us where people are and are moving to. A lot of what we’re working on now is the route structure in the “new New Orleans.”

Also, the Lower Ninth Ward is still totally leveled so we’ll see more changes there. And we’re seeing a lot of young people moving into New Orleans that weren’t there before.

New Orleans streetcar. Photo by Jason Layne.

Decatur Street, New Orleans. Photo by Matt Wetta.

This interview is part of a bi-weekly series with sustainable transportation advocates, planners, engineers, journalists, sociologists, and other experts working to shed light on best practices and solutions from across the globe. We welcome your suggestions for future Q&As.

Veolia Transportation is a $48 billion private company that works in the United States, Canada and Europe to implement transportation solutions for cities. Its programs include private services, like shuttle, sedan and taxi services, to traditional public transit, like bus, rail and paratransit. In some cases, Veolia runs and manages the entire public transit system or, in other cases, just a component of the system. For these cases, mostly in European cities, where Veolia owns the whole system, the company is managing “operations, safety, maintenance, customer care, routes and schedules, capital planning, budgeting, employee salaries & benefits, human resources, marketing, ridership growth, grant administration, as well as all the other typical functions of a transit authority.”

In New Orleans, Veolia has opted to run the entire city’s public transportation system. The coastal city, still wrenching from issues of social and environmental justice, urban poverty and the movement of 800,000 thousand people from their original homes, is rebuilding after one of the most devastating storms in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina.  In many ways the storm has given rise to a new vision and rebirth for the region of which public transportation is a key component.

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) approved in July 2009 a unique contract with Veolia. According to the press release, “the historic agreement is based on an ambitious, phased plan to improve public transportation and mobility in New Orleans over the next ten years, as a cornerstone of the city’s continuing renewal following Hurricane Katrina.” This is the first “delegate management” program in the U.S. in which Veolia is assuming all the functions and operations including commercial risks, legal and financial components, including insurance. We interviewed Senior Vice President of Business Development Dick Alexander to learn more about this model. Alexander works to create proposals for Veolia and build partnerships.

The New Orleans RTA operates multiple modes of transit, including 93 buses, paratransit vehicles, neighborhood circulators, 10 circulator vans, and 66 New Orleans Streetcars. The systems transports more than 11.5 million passengers per year and 31,500 passengers per day.

Can you give me some background as to why you chose to own and operate public transportation in New Orleans?

Veolia Transportation is part of Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement. Veolia Transport operates in 28 countries. We provide passenger transportation for cities and counties under a contract basis. A city or county would contract with us to provide all of the transportation in a city—basically whatever it takes to operate a public transit system. In the U.S., that’s typically in the form of operations and maintenance. In San Diego, for example, we operate half of the bus system. The city provides the buses but we provide the drivers, management and run the services. We do that in about 120 locations in the U.S. and establish a price per hour for the service we provide.

In Europe, where Veolia does most of its work, it’s a slightly different model. A public policy board develops the goals of the system and then you have the implementers of that policy, which usually involves the private sector. In France, everyone below the board level is charged with implementation, marketing, planning, grant work—every aspect of creating a public transportation program. We’ve started introducing this system in the U.S. to create better systems. We think this model is superior because you allow the public policy people to focus on bigger issues and the private sector focuses on whatever the issues are from changing the modal split to a  reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, etc.

New Orleans is the first example of the private sector run model in the U.S.

What brought you to New Orleans? Weren’t you worried about the risks associated with a city undergoing so many changes?

New Orleans was unique because the post-Katrina the fleet wasn’t good. A lot of talent had left New Orleans. Facilities were still housed in trailers and there weren’t the right resources given the environment. So we introduced the Delegate Management model. We brought our resources to the city because any transit system, whether 30 or 1,000 buses, need the same thing: technology, good management, etc.

We felt we could bring the needed expertise to the table given the situation. And set out to jump start the system in New Orleans and get it back to what it was. At one point, New Orleans supported one one of the most productive systems in the country.

What made it so productive?

Ridership was high and the system was well used. There’s pretty good density in the wards and the streetcar generated a lot of ridership. But Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward and pushed people out of the urban core.

A lot of it was how to get the system back to being a good functioning system that could be part of the growth and rebuilding of New Orleans.  We saw it as opportunity that in the long run is important for the industry. It allowed us to put our intellectual stamp on the issue so we saw it as less of a risk and more an opportunity. It has turned out that way.

New Orleans after the storm in the spring of 2006. Photo by Jonna McKone

So how exactly does it work? What is your relationship with the RTA?

RTA functions as the board, develops policy, direction and where they want to see the system go.  RTA is the legal entity that oversees the delivery of the public transit system in New Orleans and Veolia gets paid on costs per hour. We advise RTA but they ultimately make the decisions about the system, not us. But we make hiring and firing decisions, we put in the infrastructure and develop the proprietary programs, etc.

So what are you looking to accomplish in New Orleans in the next ten years?

We received a stimulus to expand New Orleans’ streetcar. [A $45 million TIGER grant from U.S. Department of Transportation.] We are also working on rebranding, getting new buses on the street as well as good fiscal management.

What has the rebranding entailed?

This is a rebirth of the system and we wanted to be able to provide a new image for the RTA. We looked historically at how they branded the system. We wanted it to be customer-focused. For example, we implemented a customer comment modular. Part of the branding was creating a logo image and look, which involved new timetables, signs and colors while keeping a tie to the history and presenting something new.

I read that bus rapid transit (BRT) is in the works for New Orleans—is this the case?

We bought some articulated buses because there are a few crowded lines. But our focus for now is expanding the streetcar system. BRT is a bit far off. We currently run normal bus routes and started Lil’ Easy, a demand-based service. [Lil’ Easy runs in the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Gentilly.] After New Orleans, there were devastated neighborhoods without enough people to ride the buses, but without transit no one would move back there.  It was a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, so we came up with a cost-effective solution that connects people to bus routes in the city. It’s still in service, but has been modified since it started.

We also wanted to create forward momentum in our work in New Orleans so we tried to get something off the ground right away.

Can you talk a bit more about streetcars in New Orleans? How do they work?

The streetcars are a historic system in New Orleans. In the city we have the St. Charles Street Line that runs from the downtown central business district to a few neighborhoods. The Canal Street Streetcar is from about six years ago and goes from downtown through a major corridor to Mid-City. The Riverfront Line goes from the Convention Center to the French Quarter.

We proposed adding three more lines to connect Canal Street to Union Station (where regional buses and Amtrak come in) and what will be a future transit hub for RTA. We also would like to connect the central business district to the streetcar network on Canal Street as well as connect the convention center to hotels. The system mostly serves residents and provides access to jobs.

Have you faced any barriers to your work in the city?

It has been a very strong partnership. The Mayor’s Office has been behind it all of the way.  We have had no major roadblocks—the board is supportive and New Orleans is very interested in rebuilding its transit system.

What would you say are the biggest needs in the city regarding transportation?

I would say more of it. For public transit to work well it has to have enough mass to make it convenient. This includes frequency and capacity. Running a bus every hour into a remote part of an area will not attract people. The streetcar is so popular is because it comes every 10 to 12 minutes. I think that’s why New Orleans transit was well used in the past—because it was reliable and frequent.

What about all the changes in the city? Does that make it hard to design effective transit? Have residential patterns shifted a lot in the city?

I think there’s a lot of change here. We work with a local consultant that does a lot of demographic work and shows us where people are and are moving to. A lot of what we’re working on now is the route structure in the “new New Orleans.”

Also, the Lower Ninth Ward is still totally leveled so we’ll see more changes there. And we’re seeing a lot of young people moving into New Orleans that weren’t there before.

New Orleans streetcar. Photo by Jason Layne.

Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation is helping to re-build energy efficient homes in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Photo via makeitrightnola.org.

Let’s be honest. Brad Pitt was a big draw for tonight’s special session on infrastructure, called “Building a Better Future – A Progress Report on Making It Right in New Orleans.”

But once you realize what his Make It Right Foundation is all about, suddenly, Brad’s star power becomes less interesting. Instead, you’re intrigued more by the people of New Orleans living and thriving in the Lower 9th Ward, thanks to the construction of new energy-efficient, sustainable houses.

Take Dierdra Taylor, a Make It Right homeowner and hospice worker, who tells the story about how she bought a brand new home, only 13 months old, and “Katrina washed it completely away.” She thought she’d never return to her old neighborhood, which was unlivable for months after the storm “because of all the bodies that were there.”

But now, thanks to the Make It Right Foundation, Dierdra said she and her family live in a 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house worth $250,000, for low monthly payments of only $400 a month. Her lighting bill is $50 per month. Pitt said the average utility bill for Make It Right homeowners is $35, and the lowest bill has been $8 — zero for electricity and $8 for administrative and processing fees.

“That’s a blessing for me because now I can give my kids some of things they never had,” Dierdra said. “My daughter’s in dance school; my son wants to play soccer and karate.” She tells another anecdote about how her 16-year-old daughter used to have asthma, but ever since moving into the new house, she’s breathing better, and they haven’t had to refill her medical prescription in months.

Personal stories like Dierdra’s make the story of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina so compelling. The subject of “infrastructure” — which can seem abstract and technical — suddenly becomes synonymous with familiar notions of “home” and “community.”

“The Lower 9th Ward was a desert; there was nothing there,” Dierdra said. “Now we have a community. There are people coming all around, watching the rebuilding process. It’s awesome.”

Her enthusiasm dominated the panel discussion, finally bringing some personality to a four-day event that was too often characterized by repetition, self-congratulating and cliches.

“I don’t know everything about ‘green global’ [she's probably referring to Global Green, a partner of Make It Right]  – I’ll leave that to Mr. Pitt and President Clinton — but all I know is I have a beautiful home. I have wonderful gadgets in there! Let me tell you about my dual-flush commode!”

Besides drawing laughter from the audience about her hi-tech toilet, Dierdra exemplifies the goal of Brad Pitt’s foundation, which is to provide safe, green, beautiful and affordable homes to people who thought they could never have a real home again. (Read Pitt’s original CGI commitment here, made in 2007.)

Tom Darden, the executive director of Make It Right, said that traditionally, those four principles of design can contradict each other, with affordability usually sacrificed. “If you’re rich, you can get an architect to design an amazing house and it can be LEED Platinum and it’s not that hard,” he said. “The challenge was how to make it affordable. We had to figure that out. We couldn’t do anything like drop a bunch of really expensive houses in the neighborhood that couldn’t be replicated, where lessons couldn’t be learned and shared in the neighborhood, in New Orleans, and perhaps, around the rest of the world.”

Make It Right demonstratedsthat it is possible to build a beautiful LEED Platinum building — using the principles of Cradle to Cradle design — at the same (or lower) cost of a conventional building.

President Clinton said, “If they can do it in New Orleans, we ought to follow their lead.”

Here are some of the cost-effective building strategies that were used to achieve Brad Pitt’s vision:

• maximizing air flow throughout the house
• shading and daylighting to preserve energy
• experimenting with modular, panelized and stick-build construction, to see which is the most cost-effective and energy-efficient
• convening teams of experts to improve the efficiency of all systems, like heating/cooling, foundation and solar panels
• saving resources and money, for example, by building wall sections that use 30 percent fewer materials but are five times stronger than minimum requirements

One strategy that goes beyond bricks and mortar is education. Make It Right teaches local contractors about new and unfamiliar building materials, thus promoting accurate price quotes and helping to lower final costs for the consumer.

Majora Carter, who was seated in the audience, will be working with the foundation on a workforce development strategy, which she has been so successful doing in places like the South Bronx, where she grew up. “Alleviating povery and remediating environment: we have to do both of those things at the same time,” she said.

Darden concluded: “This is not hard. This is easy and can be replicated anywhere.”

SCALABLE SOLUTIONS

Make It Right, so far, has only built 13 homes. Its goal is to build 150. It’s a small-scale case study but has the potential to inspire similar housing developments around the world.

“This is a premiere template for how we will build our communities for our future,” Pitt said. “The Make It Right model should work in any climate, any condition, any culture around the world. We remain dedicated to New Orleans, but we would like to take this out to a wider spectrum, in the United States and abroad. We are just scratching the surface.”

In order for this to become a truly scalable endeavor, communities need the support of the government, according to the panelists.

“As a species, what is our intention?” said world-renowned architect and designer William McDonough. “We can change the weather, the acidity of the ocean, we can pollute. If that’s our plan, we’re doing great. If it’s not our plan, there’s no one who’s been ordained to articulate the plan. That’s where I think government could really play a role.”

This would mean creating incentives for developers to build energy-efficient, safe and equitable homes. This would mean creating public-private partnerships to leverage existing money and resources.

OLD VS. NEW

One thing that I thought was interesting about the panel was the inclusion of Nawal Al Hosany, director of Sustainability for Masdar City of UAE International. Masdar bills itself as the world’s first carbon-neutral zero waste city, powered entirely by renewable energy. Al Hosany touted the “holistic approach” her government has taken to stimulate the economy by creating jobs and new markets, improving the quality of life for residents, cleaning the environment, and so forth. “If you just target just one aspect,” she said, “you cannot be sustainable; you have to have the whole value chain working together.”

Masdar’s vision certainly is enviable. But what struck me about the Masdar project is how different it is from New Orleans. Masdar is being built from scratch. New Orleans is rooted in history. Masdar aims to draw in a new population of 90,000 residents. New Orleans is trying to re-build the community it lost. Masdar is a symbol of growth and innovation. New Orleans has a legacy of trauma and government neglect.

Indeed, Masdar has faced much criticism:

Treehugger asked, “Are Masdar City and the Masdar Initiative a first step toward genuine sustainable development in the Gulf – or a very clever strategy to shield the Emirates from environmental criticism while they continue along the same unsustainable path?”

Peter Droege, a renewable energy expert, had this response: “This depends on whether Masdar is part of a genuine national defossilisation strategy or a one-off green billboard at the airport. When the oil is ‘gone’, what will Masdar produce that can justify the bloated population in the desert metropolis? These questions are not really being addressed – but to me this vision would be more interesting than Masdar as the solar mall it is presented as.”

This reminds me of what was said at an earlier session this morning, about how “place is space with memory.” With no memory to speak of, how can an out-of-the-box eco-city like Masdar develop into a real community? Who will be responsible for setting the vision, when there is no sense of attachment or ownership of the place?

By the same token, how can New Orleans continue to strive for innovative principles, rather than rely on conventional thinking? How can stakeholders like Make It Right ensure that the people in the community have a voice in the decision-making process?

At the end of the day, infrastructure is more than just roads, buildings and electrical lines. It’s about the social fabric of a community, and the collective memory of a geography, that determines whether a place will thrive and replicate, or destroy itself from within.

PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS:

William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President, United States of America; Founding Chairman, Clinton Global Initiative
Nawal Al Hosany, Director of Sustainability, Masdar City, UAE International
Melody Barnes, Director of Domestic Policy Council, White House
Tom Darden, Executive Director, Make It Right
Richard Fedrizzi, President, USGBC
William McDonough, Founding Partner, William McDonough & Partners
Brad Pitt, Founder, Make It Right
Dierdra Taylor, Make It Right Homeowner; Hospice Worker

Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation is helping to re-build energy efficient homes in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Photo via makeitrightnola.org.

Let’s be honest. Brad Pitt was a big draw for tonight’s special session on infrastructure, called “Building a Better Future – A Progress Report on Making It Right in New Orleans.”

But once you realize what his Make It Right Foundation is all about, suddenly, Brad’s star power becomes less interesting. Instead, you’re intrigued more by the people of New Orleans living and thriving in the Lower 9th Ward, thanks to the construction of new energy-efficient, sustainable houses.

Take Dierdra Taylor, a Make It Right homeowner and hospice worker, who tells the story about how she bought a brand new home, only 13 months old, and “Katrina washed it completely away.” She thought she’d never return to her old neighborhood, which was unlivable for months after the storm “because of all the bodies that were there.”

But now, thanks to the Make It Right Foundation, Dierdra said she and her family live in a 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house worth $250,000, for low monthly payments of only $400 a month. Her lighting bill is $50 per month. Pitt said the average utility bill for Make It Right homeowners is $35, and the lowest bill has been $8 — zero for electricity and $8 for administrative and processing fees.

“That’s a blessing for me because now I can give my kids some of things they never had,” Dierdra said. “My daughter’s in dance school; my son wants to play soccer and karate.” She tells another anecdote about how her 16-year-old daughter used to have asthma, but ever since moving into the new house, she’s breathing better, and they haven’t had to refill her medical prescription in months.

Personal stories like Dierdra’s make the story of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina so compelling. The subject of “infrastructure” — which can seem abstract and technical — suddenly becomes synonymous with familiar notions of “home” and “community.”

“The Lower 9th Ward was a desert; there was nothing there,” Dierdra said. “Now we have a community. There are people coming all around, watching the rebuilding process. It’s awesome.”

Her enthusiasm dominated the panel discussion, finally bringing some personality to a four-day event that was too often characterized by repetition, self-congratulating and cliches.

“I don’t know everything about ‘green global’ [she's probably referring to Global Green, a partner of Make It Right]  – I’ll leave that to Mr. Pitt and President Clinton — but all I know is I have a beautiful home. I have wonderful gadgets in there! Let me tell you about my dual-flush commode!”

Besides drawing laughter from the audience about her hi-tech toilet, Dierdra exemplifies the goal of Brad Pitt’s foundation, which is to provide safe, green, beautiful and affordable homes to people who thought they could never have a real home again. (Read Pitt’s original CGI commitment here, made in 2007.)

Tom Darden, the executive director of Make It Right, said that traditionally, those four principles of design can contradict each other, with affordability usually sacrificed. “If you’re rich, you can get an architect to design an amazing house and it can be LEED Platinum and it’s not that hard,” he said. “The challenge was how to make it affordable. We had to figure that out. We couldn’t do anything like drop a bunch of really expensive houses in the neighborhood that couldn’t be replicated, where lessons couldn’t be learned and shared in the neighborhood, in New Orleans, and perhaps, around the rest of the world.”

Make It Right demonstratedsthat it is possible to build a beautiful LEED Platinum building — using the principles of Cradle to Cradle design — at the same (or lower) cost of a conventional building.

President Clinton said, “If they can do it in New Orleans, we ought to follow their lead.”

Here are some of the cost-effective building strategies that were used to achieve Brad Pitt’s vision:

• maximizing air flow throughout the house
• shading and daylighting to preserve energy
• experimenting with modular, panelized and stick-build construction, to see which is the most cost-effective and energy-efficient
• convening teams of experts to improve the efficiency of all systems, like heating/cooling, foundation and solar panels
• saving resources and money, for example, by building wall sections that use 30 percent fewer materials but are five times stronger than minimum requirements

One strategy that goes beyond bricks and mortar is education. Make It Right teaches local contractors about new and unfamiliar building materials, thus promoting accurate price quotes and helping to lower final costs for the consumer.

Majora Carter, who was seated in the audience, will be working with the foundation on a workforce development strategy, which she has been so successful doing in places like the South Bronx, where she grew up. “Alleviating povery and remediating environment: we have to do both of those things at the same time,” she said.

Darden concluded: “This is not hard. This is easy and can be replicated anywhere.”

SCALABLE SOLUTIONS

Make It Right, so far, has only built 13 homes. Its goal is to build 150. It’s a small-scale case study but has the potential to inspire similar housing developments around the world.

“This is a premiere template for how we will build our communities for our future,” Pitt said. “The Make It Right model should work in any climate, any condition, any culture around the world. We remain dedicated to New Orleans, but we would like to take this out to a wider spectrum, in the United States and abroad. We are just scratching the surface.”

In order for this to become a truly scalable endeavor, communities need the support of the government, according to the panelists.

“As a species, what is our intention?” said world-renowned architect and designer William McDonough. “We can change the weather, the acidity of the ocean, we can pollute. If that’s our plan, we’re doing great. If it’s not our plan, there’s no one who’s been ordained to articulate the plan. That’s where I think government could really play a role.”

This would mean creating incentives for developers to build energy-efficient, safe and equitable homes. This would mean creating public-private partnerships to leverage existing money and resources.

OLD VS. NEW

One thing that I thought was interesting about the panel was the inclusion of Nawal Al Hosany, director of Sustainability for Masdar City of UAE International. Masdar bills itself as the world’s first carbon-neutral zero waste city, powered entirely by renewable energy. Al Hosany touted the “holistic approach” her government has taken to stimulate the economy by creating jobs and new markets, improving the quality of life for residents, cleaning the environment, and so forth. “If you just target just one aspect,” she said, “you cannot be sustainable; you have to have the whole value chain working together.”

Masdar’s vision certainly is enviable. But what struck me about the Masdar project is how different it is from New Orleans. Masdar is being built from scratch. New Orleans is rooted in history. Masdar aims to draw in a new population of 90,000 residents. New Orleans is trying to re-build the community it lost. Masdar is a symbol of growth and innovation. New Orleans has a legacy of trauma and government neglect.

Indeed, Masdar has faced much criticism:

Treehugger asked, “Are Masdar City and the Masdar Initiative a first step toward genuine sustainable development in the Gulf – or a very clever strategy to shield the Emirates from environmental criticism while they continue along the same unsustainable path?”

Peter Droege, a renewable energy expert, had this response: “This depends on whether Masdar is part of a genuine national defossilisation strategy or a one-off green billboard at the airport. When the oil is ‘gone’, what will Masdar produce that can justify the bloated population in the desert metropolis? These questions are not really being addressed – but to me this vision would be more interesting than Masdar as the solar mall it is presented as.”

This reminds me of what was said at an earlier session this morning, about how “place is space with memory.” With no memory to speak of, how can an out-of-the-box eco-city like Masdar develop into a real community? Who will be responsible for setting the vision, when there is no sense of attachment or ownership of the place?

By the same token, how can New Orleans continue to strive for innovative principles, rather than rely on conventional thinking? How can stakeholders like Make It Right ensure that the people in the community have a voice in the decision-making process?

At the end of the day, infrastructure is more than just roads, buildings and electrical lines. It’s about the social fabric of a community, and the collective memory of a geography, that determines whether a place will thrive and replicate, or destroy itself from within.

PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS:

William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President, United States of America; Founding Chairman, Clinton Global Initiative
Nawal Al Hosany, Director of Sustainability, Masdar City, UAE International
Melody Barnes, Director of Domestic Policy Council, White House
Tom Darden, Executive Director, Make It Right
Richard Fedrizzi, President, USGBC
William McDonough, Founding Partner, William McDonough & Partners
Brad Pitt, Founder, Make It Right
Dierdra Taylor, Make It Right Homeowner; Hospice Worker