Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for New Orleans May 2005

[whistle]

....use "FIND" tool on word vision (note: follow the money, who gains who looses with MPOs)

http://norpc.org/projects_programs/citrizen_participation/public_involve_about.htm



...and a related article:

<snip>
After 287 years, Orleans Parish may soon have a master plan
New Orleans CityBusiness, Aug 8, 2005 by Deon Roberts

When Stephen Villavaso was a graduate student at the University of New Orleans in 1974, his urban studies professor, Ralph Thayer, gave the class what seemed to be a piece-of-cake assignment: Bring a copy of the city's master plan to class.

It turned out to be an impossible task.

It didn't exist, said Villavaso, who still laughs when he thinks about the bogus assignment.

The professor's wild goose chase 31 years ago was meant to underscore the fact New Orleans had no true master plan. Now, just 13 years short of its 300th birthday, it still doesn't.

<more>
<link>
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050808/ai_n14851209


<snip>
A REPORT ON PLANNING IN NEW ORLEANS
For the Master Plan Coalition

Daniel R. Mandelker
Stamper Professor of Law
Washington University in St. Louis



This report reviews the progress of planning and zoning in New Orleans and makes recommendations for reforming that process. The city has completed a land use plan as part of its effort to complete a master plan, and has also completed a draft of a new zoning ordinance. Unfortunately, neither document meets the city's needs for guidance in the development and preservation of the city. Although the land use plan can possibly provide a basis for more responsive land use planning, the draft comprehensive zoning ordinance (CZO) is inadequate and should be shelved until a more effective zoning ordinance can be prepared.

Neither does the city have an adequate legal basis for the planning process. The city charter requires the planning commission to adopt a master plan, but does not require the city council to adopt the plan and does not require zoning and other land use decisions to be consistent with the master plan. The city should adopt both of these requirements.


The Challenge
Historic neighborhoods. The City of New Orleans is a national treasure. Half of the city is designated as an historic district under the National Historic Preservation Act. The city created 13 local historic districts, and five applications are pending from neighborhoods that have proposed historic district designations. This chain of historic neighborhoods defines the city’s signature quality. Each neighborhood is a mixed, fine-grained assemblage of land uses, each with its distinctive historic style and character.

<snip>
Conclusions

New Orleans is a priceless legacy; its survival requires care and protection. Mandatory planning, and a requirement that all land use decisions must be consistent with the comprehensive plan, are necessary to manage development within the city and to protect its historic neighborhoods. Planning for New Orleans must also take a visionary approach based on urban design principles. This kind of planning can provide responsive neighborhood and development plans that reflect a sense of place, and that will furnish a blueprint for neighborhood preservation and new development projects.

The planning process must be completed through the preparation of all the necessary planning elements, and the land use plan must be revised to include the policy planning and neighborhood approach that this report recommends. The draft zoning ordinance should be shelved until the city can develop a different kind of zoning ordinance that implements the planning and zoning program recommended in this report.

The planning and zoning program recommended in this report should be enacted into law by a city ordinance that mandates the adoption of a comprehensive plan by the city council and requires all zoning and land use decisions to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. The city charter can eventually be amended to authorize these requirements. The neighborhood organization program and planning and zoning procedures recommended in this report should ensure that the policies of the plan are implemented, and that the zoning ordinance is fairly administered.

Experience in other cities has taught me that you must adopt the legislation that mandates the creation of the master plan, establishes the principal of regulatory consistency, and legally structures the neighborhoods into the planning process before you begin to develop a plan for the community. Over and over again it has been shown that the public as well at private sector will ignore the plan unless they are legally required to follow it. To retain the services of planners, to write planning reports, and to involve citizens in a planning process before the legal authority has been established for that process is to waste taxpayers money and to cause citizen disillusionment.
<more>
<link> http://law.wustl.edu/landuselaw/neworl.htm


...and finally, this article debunking the conservative vision of urban sprall in America:

<snip>
A Phoenix From The Mud
Patrick Doherty
September 08, 2005
The one thing that David Brooks got right in his NYT op-ed, "Katrina's Silver Lining ," is that the devastation of New Orleans does offer a unique opportunity—indeed, an obligation—to rebuild this American city in a way that reduces endemic urban poverty.

But when he describes just how that should be done, Brooks reveals his real interest. This denizen of the American Enterprise Institute is not so much keen on transforming the lives of poor people as he is in reinforcing the suburban miasma that is essential to conservative political power in America. How? Brooks wants to integrate the poverty-stricken and now displaced residents of New Orleans into middle-class neighborhoods around the country:

In the post-Katrina world, that means we ought to give people who don't want to move back to New Orleans the means to disperse into middle-class areas nationwide.

Obviously, that means sending them to the suburbs, where their cost of living will skyrocket. First, they will need cars. To get the cars and pay for the gas, they will need better paying jobs than they will likely be qualified for. If they get a job, perhaps in a Wal-Mart, they will need child care because their extended families are no longer living in the neighborhood, or even the state. Of course, housing costs will go up, unless, of course these families are relocated to suburban ghettos—defeating the entire purpose.

The fact is, poor people are moving into middle-class suburbs across the United States and it is not working.
<more>
<link> http://www.tompaine.com/print/a_phoenix_from_the_mud.php