General Planning
Please click here for Michael's detailed recommendations on these topics:
- Future City Planning – Town centers, neighborhoods, and the streets that connect them should encourage walking and should provide essential services (food stores, pharmacies, entertainment, schools, and public services) within a five-minute walking distance.
- Economic Vitality – Actions should reflect the need to rebuild and sustain a diverse, vibrant economy. As with all principles, building a strong economy should complement, rather than contradict others listed below.
- Promote Social and Intergenerational Equity – Improve social conditions to include assisting the most socially vulnerable populations and taking actions that enable future generations to live, work, and play in a place that is better than the conditions of the past.
- Maintain and Enhance a High Quality of Life – Recovery and reconstruction activities should improve the way in which people live, work, and play. Specific factors include: enhanced recreational, health care, educational, and employment opportunities.
- Institutionalizing Hazard Resilience – Identify and implement a comprehensive strategy that protects lives and property from the damaging effects of natural hazards. Actions may include land use, codes, public education, and the hardening, retrofitting, or relocation of at-risk structures.
- Aesthetics and Historic Preservation – Encourage the preservation of historic structures and sites as practical and consider the reconstruction of structures in a way that captures the historic vernacular and local community aesthetic.
- Public Participation – Incorporate public participation practices into recovery decision-making processes. Participatory actions may include, but are not limited to, public education, participatory planning, notifying people of relevant issues, policies and funding opportunities, referenda, representative policymaking, open meetings, and hearings.
- Disaster Planning --
- A Unified Communications System – This would connect all health care providers, state and local agencies, the law enforcement community, first responders, and NGOs who commit to the investment.
- Special Needs Shelters – When a disaster is imminent, special needs shelters for oxygen-dependent, dialysis, and non-hospitalized patients who require ongoing care should be identified in every parish. A written plan for these shelters should specify locations, management, staffing, security, and eligibility. The plan also should specifically address shelters for mental health patients who are being treated in outpatient programs.
- Non-Governmental Organizations
- Greater Representation in Recovery Planning – Without a donors’ forum, local NGOs find it difficult to have a common voice and, therefore, have not been fully integrated in recovery discussions. The Commission recommends that the governor or other designated state or local official appoint a member of the nonprofit community to serve on future committees or commissions tasked with long-term recovery.
- A Nonprofit Clearinghouse – The entity, the New Orleans Non-Profit Clearinghouse, should be the cornerstone institution providing business and professional development and key links with national organizations, such as the National Center for Philanthropy, for grant research. The Clearinghouse should be the central communications point among NGOs during disasters and an information clearinghouse in recovery. The entity also may provide grant search resources and temporary working office space for NGOs.
- Greater Representation in Recovery Planning – Without a donors’ forum, local NGOs find it difficult to have a common voice and, therefore, have not been fully integrated in recovery discussions. The Commission recommends that the governor or other designated state or local official appoint a member of the nonprofit community to serve on future committees or commissions tasked with long-term recovery.
- A Unified Communications System – This would connect all health care providers, state and local agencies, the law enforcement community, first responders, and NGOs who commit to the investment.
- Protect Environmental Quality - Disaster-recovery policies and reconstruction practices should respect how decisions enhance or degrade environmental quality. Preserving natural systems, such as wetlands and barrier islands, which are often located in known high-hazard areas, provides an additional benefit of protecting adjacent property from flooding and coastal storm surge.
Like it or not, New Orleans is closer to the Gulf of Mexico than it used to be. We must rebuild the natural defenses that nature gave us and take advantage of those created by man that may have been overlooked.
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