At their myopic worst, the urban-planning dreamers ~ especially those who don’t live here ~ have a very easy time designating which neighborhoods are worth rebuilding and which are not.

They need to realize that each lot on each city block belongs to a PERSON (or a family, or even in some cases, I suppose, to a corporation). And they also need to realize that the only rebuilding going on around here is being done by those individual property owners who are able to help themselves. God knows the government, on every level, is not much help, and in fact is often a hindrance to progress.

Like it or not, planned-for or not, progress across the city is geographically piecemeal. Some neighborhoods weren’t flooded at all, others were devasted; some flooded-out areas are being rebuilt at a moderately rapid rate, others are not.

It’s interesting how an area’s average income and social status is impacting the process. Areas of greatest poverty, predictably enough, are having trouble coming back, but the converse ~ which one might expect ~ is not the case at all. Seems like folks flooded out of the most affluent neighborhoods are much less committed to returning than are those in areas of more modest means.

Look at Lakeview, where there are entire city blocks with only one or two houses still standing. Part of the explanation is that homeowners in this highly affluent area can afford to demolish and rebuild bigger and better (“McMansions,” if you really think that’s something “better”). But these are also people in a position to bail out, move away, and take their chances on whether they lose or gain a few bucks selling their gutted houses or empty lots.

Homeowners in more modest areas are more likely to feel attached to their little pieces of New Orleans as “all they’ve got,” and to think of their property simply as “home,” and not ever as “an investment.”

Those New Orleanians committed to staying in the city, whether rich, poor, or in-between, whether native or “Orleanian by choice,” are the only ones who are determining what gets rebuilt and where. All the writing and “blogging” anyone can do, here or elsewhere, can’t change that basic fact.