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New Orleans; Climate Change

Rebuilding in a Time of Global Change

July 26, 2007; New Orleans Times-Picayune;
Editorial by Ed Blakely

For the first time, the majority of humans live in cities. This is remarkable for two reasons. First, world food production is rising to support this move from farm to city. Second, new cities are not being formed, but old cities are getting bigger.

Unfortunately, the move from farm to city is not making life better for most of the world's growing population. This was the substance of the message of the world urban conference that I attended in Bellagio, Italy, as one of several hundred experts from around the globe.

The first day of the conference brought a wake-up call when Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, used the situation in New Orleans to illustrate the dangers of climate change impacts on cities. No matter how one feels about climate change, the evidence that he presented about the reduction of human forests, shorelines, animal and plant life was alarming.

It was clear from the talks at this summit that the focus of urban expert attention is on New Orleans' rebuilding efforts. The world is watching us.

The move to mega-metros

Cities as we know them are forms of the agricultural era. All of our institutions are based on the farm era. Our city size and organization emerge from the time when city boundaries were formed on the basis of a day's horse ride. But as the speakers at the forum pointed out, it is the mega-region that will form the basis for the generation of future economic wealth. These new super-regions are economic systems and ecosystems that are interconnected and act as the economic engines for the mega-region. For example, the Los Angeles mega-region stretches from Santa Barbara to Baja, Calif. In the case of New Orleans, our mega-region stretches from Houston to Pensacola.

These new mega-regions are the vehicle for the development of a new world trade system that respects regions more than nations.

Mega-regions may be more connected to trade partners than to locations that are physically closer to them. The Sydney, Australia, mega-region has more trade and interactions with the Los Angeles mega-region than with any place in Australia. Our Houston-Pensacola mega-region will have more interactions with Latin America than it does with the rest of the United States.

That means that we need to think both internationally and locally as we design our economy. We have to build our eco-system as we rebuild our local economy to account for improved social and economic equity. We must view initiatives such as the bioscience center, port distribution center and digital media as steps to our role in the mega-region development that will build new jobs for a sustainable future for all of our residents.

We have to work across state and local lines to restore our coastlines in order for this economy to thrive and survive.

Changing demographics

Within the next decade, single adults will outnumber married adults.

This is in part because women live longer than men. But it also because Americans and most of the developed world are experiencing later marriage and lower birth rates. But despite this, the United States is projected to have 125 million more Americans by 2050 than we have today.

Some of these new Americans will come from a constant flow of new immigrants who are escaping countries where poverty and a lack of opportunity are forcing them to find new horizons. But the vast majority of the new population will come from the current cohort of Americans as they have children and their children have children. This new population will be more racially diverse than earlier populations. It will be largely of Latin American, African and Asian ancestry, rather than of European lineage. So, as we recover in New Orleans, we have to remember our own origins as a trading center for populations from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

We will have to prepare for a new New Orleans from around the world and all over the United States as we repair our old city for a new population.

The greening of the world

Finally, cities cannot get bigger unless they become greener.

Carbon emissions are already at alarming rates. One clear message from all of the research presented at the conference was that as cities grow, the automobile as we know it cannot be the urban backbone. New fuels, along with new ways for people to access their jobs and communities, will have to be a major part of city building.

In New Orleans, we have gone through an almost two-year planning process that aims to make cleaner, greener and more sustainable neighborhoods. These plans are superb and conferees were uniformly impressed by the New Orleans planning effort as a model for the new urban world.

It is clear that our Citywide Strategic Recovery and Redevelopment plan has to match our intentions. The world is expecting New Orleans to take the lead in developing a better, safer and more sustainable city form.

Let's take on this challenge. We have already announced it to the world.

Edward J. Blakely is the executive director of the Office of Recovery Management for New Orleans.

© 2007 The Times Picayune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.

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