the corner office

I saw a BBC article saying that Bush is to visit New Orleans (first time in three months), to see what's been done since Hurrican Katrina. That reminded me of something I'd forgotten to post last week. The Rude Pundit had a fairly depressing, but well-worth-reading series of blog posts and photos from a recent visit to New Orleans, showing just what a mess the city still is: (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5). The 'Possible Body' photo in post 5 brings it all home.

The (not) rebuilding effort isn't without its controversy and accusations of non-delivery, obviously, but one of the problems boils down to the economics of cities: people live in cities because they have jobs, facilities, and opportunity. If people don't come back because they no longer have jobs and/or won't have much luck finding new ones, and if the businesses and industry that provide those jobs aren't sure whether they should return because they're not sure if they'll have customers around, then it's a horrible Catch-22. You can't just send out a message 'hey everyone, come back!' and have things go back to the way they were. Particularly so in what was an incredibly poverty-stricken city to begin with.

Government investment might help to instil more confidence, undoubtedly, but that ties into the other part of the problem, the thing that most people probably aren't comfortable talking about - is it worth rebuilding? New Orleans was a culturally rich and vibrant place, and the world would be a duller place without it, no doubt, but having a city below sea level was and will continue to be a disaster waiting to happen, and re-happen, and re-happen.

Having said that, being the most profligate government in the history of America, I don't think the current US administration has much grounds to whinge about not wanting to spend money on something like this, and any non-delivery can probably be ascribed to incompetence and disinterest, more than anything else.

As an aside, I learned over the holiday that my aunt's sister and her hubby were living in New Orleans when Katrina struck, and went through the ordeal of evacuating to Houston, only to be evacuated again when Rita struck. Their home wasn't destroyed, but they're not planning to move back to the city, and so they're in the same boat as everyone else, trying to pick up the pieces and make new lives elsewhere. While I don't know my aunt's-sister-and-her-hubby very well, it does add a more personal angle to things.