new orleans
water inundation economies plantations self-reliance
building technology | passive economics by sandra lester
20/20 hindsight
Rejuvenation is synonymous with post-Katrina New Orleans. In one of the oldest cities in North America, what can we learn from its past successes and mistakes to carry into the future? The oldest part of New Orleans, le Vieux Carré, is located on high ground. Eighteenth century plans show a garden next to every house, producing most of the food needed within the limits of the city with the exception of large-scale agricultural products such as cotton and sugar. The pressure to infill must have been great in this city, as it has been in all others. Economic sense outsourced the gardens to the suburbs, and then to the countryside — giving up gardening to others and leveraging their time. Post-World War II economics led to the
development of New Orleans below sea level. Suburban wards with inexpensive wood houses have proved themselves incapable of dealing with the potential dangers of the held-back flood waters of the nearby river and channels. The levees themselves were inaccurately built, invisibly compounding the dangers. Can we learn anything from the earliest incarnation of New Orleans? The city was ceded to Spain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris and remained under Spanish control until 1801. Most of the surviving architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from this Spanish period. It was climate-appropriate architecture and innately passive in design. The buildings are shaded in the summer, bring in sun in the winter and have interior courtyards that block winds off the Gulf. Outside the city, along the banks of the Mississippi, slave-owning plantations produced the wealth that supported New Orleans. Some plantation houses still stand: the San Francisco in St. John-the-
Baptist Parish, built in 1856 by Edmond Marmillion has been restored by the Marathon Oil Company for tours and events. The location is quite shocking. The house is subjugated by massive oil tanks on the property behind and on either side. It’s ironic to think that the petroleum industry that sponsored the restorations is mostly responsible for the climate changes that have caused the erratic weather patterns and more frequent and violent storms which so viciously attack this region. The San Francisco was built just before the Civil War, the sugarcane industry was at its peak, the port of New Orleans was the fourth largest in the world and a number of plantation owners were millionaires who could afford the best and latest technologies of the day, implemented in what we would consider today as un-serviced off-grid properties, with no connection to a power supply, water or sewage waste-disposal systems. At San Francisco, two large cylindrical silos stand
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On Site review 21: stormy weather
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