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Daily Archives: March 13, 2007

Duany on New Orleans: Create a Deregulated Zone

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
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Andrés Duany — who is a native of Cuba — observes that New Orleans should not be considered the most corrupt city in America, but the least corrupt city in the Caribbean. But, he warns, the city is in danger of losing its Caribbean soul since many of the people who are key to that soul are not moving back.

Many of New Orleans’ low-income neighborhoods were built decades ago, when building codes were not as strict as they are today. Rebuilding them to meet modern codes will cost far more than their former occupants can afford.


Many New Orleans neighborhoods remain unoccupied because their former residents cannot afford to rebuild to modern zoning codes. Flickr photo by lambchops.

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Portland Gets Residents’ Feedback on Vision

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
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When former Portland police chief Tom Potter became the city’s mayor in 2005, he immediately announced “VisionPDX,” an effort to “create a vision for Portland for the next 20 years.” Since the previous mayor, who grew up in Brooklyn NY, seemed determined to impose her Brooklynesque vision on Portland with or without their consent, many Portlanders jumped at the opportunity to submit comments to Potter’s visioning program.

In all, the city received 13,000 responses to its questionaires about a vision for Portland, and they don’t offer much comfort to those who praise Portland’s goal of becoming a compact city. Unfortunately, VisionPDX hasn’t yet posted either the answers to the questionaires or its analysis of them on its web page.

But news reports indicate that the analysis finds that “many Portlanders are deeply worried the city is moving backward” and in particular that it “is becoming unaffordable.”

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