New urbanists prepare to tackle Gulf Coast reconstruction plan

PHILIP LANGDON

Some 100 architects, planners, transportation specialists, and other professionals from new urbanist firms across the US will meet in Mississippi Oct. 11-18 to help lead a massive planning effort aimed at rebuilding at least nine of that state’s stricken coastal communities, including Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula. The firms involved will work for a fraction of their usual fees and will team up with local architects and planners, said Miami architect-planner Andres Duany, who is coordinating the program on behalf of the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Gov. Haley Barbour met with Duany Sept. 12 and authorized him Sept. 20 to bring in teams to collaborate with some of the worst-hit communities along 120 miles of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. “It is important to emphasize that these tools and designs will be made available to the local stakeholders, but not forced upon them,” CNU President John Norquist said in a letter to the governor. “It is for each community to decide what to do.” Norquist will join Duany in leading the CNU initiative.

Independent of CNU’s effort, Dover, Kohl & Partners has been rushing to complete plans for a 2,000-acre new urban community near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, just east of the Louisiana border. In June, Dover Kohl, in conjunction with Zimmerman/Volk Associates, Gibbs Planning Group, and Hall Planning & Engineering, conducted a nine-day charrette to plan “a technology village, town center, and nine neighborhoods” for the as-yet-unnamed development, said Milt Rhodes, Dover Kohl project manager. After the hurricane, it soon became clear that plans for the Dover Kohl project — the first development site east of NASA’s Stennis Space Center — would have to be intensified, and the pace of construction would have to accelerate.

With roughly 7,000 dwellings damaged in greater Bay St. Louis, perhaps 3,000 of them beyond repair, the new community is expected to accommodate a rapid influx of displaced people. Some families will get permanent homes, and others will probably occupy temporary dwellings supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The temporary housing may be campers or trailers.

The developer, a family enterprise called Stennis Technology Park Inc., has asked Dover Kohl to finish a master plan and a form-based code as quickly as possible. “Our code is based on building types from a study we did in June of Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, and New Orleans,” Rhodes said. Situated in an unincorporated section of Hancock County, the project may accommodate 3,500 or more housing units, including a much larger contingent of attached housing — townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, and quads — than had been anticipated prior to Katrina. “We made a strong pitch to the developer that there is no maximum number of lots” that should be specified in the plan, Rhodes said. He added, “I would expect it [site preparation, including road and utility installation] to start very quickly.”

In New Orleans, which fell victim to one of the worst disasters ever to strike a US city, the flooded areas included the New Desire HOPE VI project, a new urban development northeast of the French Quarter. Urban Design Associates master-planned New Desire, and for more than three years Torti Gallas and Partners designed the buildings and oversaw their construction. Torti Gallas had taken pains to design the dwellings — mostly side-by-side two-family houses — in a traditional mode, with the result that some of them resembled the narrow “shotgun” houses for which New Orleans is famous. “We are still waiting to hear the fate of the community,” said Loreen Arnold, Torti Gallas project architect/manager.

Levees broke on two sides of the development, and water rose eight feet above the foundations of the 107 dwellings that had been completed and occupied. Floodwaters also inundated the project’s final phase, 318 houses that were about 40 percent finished. “It’s kind of crushing to see the work of three years undone in a day, especially in light of how hard it is to get affordable housing built anyway,” Arnold lamented.

As New Urban News went to press, parts of New Orleans were still under water, and some seemingly knowledgeable people feared that the soil in New Orleans had become so contaminated with sewage, chemicals, and heavy metals that it would be difficult to make city safe for human habitation within a reasonable time. There was even some talk that given the high cost of cleaning the soil, it might make sense to build a new town outside New Orleans and let many evacuees live there — though many more people insisted that a city as beloved as New Orleans must be restored. At press time, New Urban News was aware of no physical planning efforts for New Orleans, and certainly none involving new urbanists. (See commentary.)

MISSISSIPPI ‘MEGA—CHARRETTE’

Compared to most other regions of the US, the South has been quite receptive to New Urbanism. Consequently, within days of Katrina’s making landfall, new urbanists such as Nathan Norris in Alabama began proposing an effort be mounted to bring the movement’s planning expertise to bear upon the massive redevelopment challenge. On the NewUrb email discussion list, Norris, who is associated with PlaceMakers, wrote, “We understand the relationship between transportation, regional planning, neighborhood planning, energy policy. ... we have folks who can connect the dots.” He observed, “Here in hurricane country, it is difficult to find opposition to our ideas.”

Duany became the effort’s natural leader, assisted by PlaceMakers’ Steve Mouzon, who has worked on many Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) charrettes, including one for the Lost Rabbit development in Madison County, Miss. “Governor Barbour has seen plans of a DPZ project [Lost Rabbit] and was quite impressed,” Mouzon said. “Mr. Barbour apparently loves what he has seen of the New Urbanism, and is trusting it to work on the seashore of his entire state.” DPZ has also worked on two projects in Louisiana — Naval housing in Belle Chasse and a plan for downtown Baton Rouge — and on five Greenfield communities in Alabama. With time being limited, Duany had the advantage of being able to choose participants quickly, something that could have been difficult for a membership organization like CNU. It was decided that no firm would be allowed to send more than three members to what some have termed the Mississippi “mega-charrette.”

New urbanists seem to have friends in both political parties. Ann Daigle, a new urbanist planner originally from Louisiana, said Democratic US Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana “is an avid supporter of Smart Growth and the new urbanist movement.” Barbour, is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Nonetheless, many of the decisions will take place at the level of municipalities and counties, where plenty of sprawling conventional development has been permitted in the past.

Norquist will coordinate arrangements with government leaders, Duany will handle the organization of professionals for CNU, and Michael Barranco will deal with professionals from Mississippi. A team coordinated by Mouzon will deal with architectural questions such as buildings to be raised more than a dozen feet above the ground — as is likely to be required in some low-lying areas — while avoiding an urban environment hostile to pedestrian life. The architects will also be asked to redesign mobile homes, panelized FEMA houses, and select products from national plan services. There will be groups assigned to deal with transportation, infrastructure, landscape, environmental and community issues, and other aspects of redevelopment.

“The Mississippi coast has been completely devastated,” Duany told the participants in an email. “The buildings are gone, but the land is dry and the infrastructure is in place.” The coastal region, he said, “will therefore be the first to move forward.” He added, “There will be subsequent charrettes for inland towns in Mississippi and possibly for Baton Rouge, and perhaps even New Orleans.”

WORKING FOR OVERHEAD

Each of the communities will be assigned a team made up of seasoned new urbanists and at least as many local professionals. Duany said the new urbanists “will be working for just our overhead costs” — a fraction of the firms’ usual billing rates. “It is necessary to differentiate ourselves from the carpetbaggers who will soon disgrace themselves,” he said. The charrette will take place at a central location, probably a Casino Hotel in Biloxi. Participants will alternate between days of central meetings and days of visiting municipalities, where they will meet people on site and observe the situation. Duany emphasized that in addition to involving local officials, “every sort of interest,” from poor people to casino owners, must be represented at the charrette.

After the participants depart on Oct. 18, one firm will take the lead to complete the work within three weeks. All subsequent work is to be done by the local teams that will have worked with the new urbanists. If the new urbanist volunteers want to continue on the project, they may contract to work for the local government. “There is no compunction to come up with a standardized product,” Duany noted. Presumably plans may differ considerably from one community to another. Jim Barksdale, a businessman-philanthropist appointed by Gov. Barbour to head a state recovery commission, and Leland Speed, director of the Mississippi Development Authority, will represent the governor in the initiative. Hank Dittmar will represent the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.

Separate from the CNU charrette, the Miami-based Knight Foundation has talked to Charles Bohl, director of the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami, about having the university program help recovery efforts in Biloxi. In addition, Norquist said he would like to get some foundation money to conduct a CNU Council in New Orleans, perhaps as early as October. A CNU Council would bring a substantial number of new urbanists to the city and could influence how New Orleans goes about plotting its recovery, the CNU president said.

As New Urban News went to press, Hurricane Rita threatened the Texas coast. The newsletter will feature substantial post-hurricane coverage in the December issue, including a detailed report on the Mississippi charrette plans.