Louisiana on fast track to adopting new urban ideas

PHILIP LANGDON

The first new urbanist-led charrette of the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) — conducted Feb. 6-11 in Lake Charles — produced positive results faster than anyone expected. Upon hearing Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) present the recommendations of the LRA-sponsored charrette, the City Council immediately endorsed the design concepts and began looking to commercial and residential development of the downtown area along new urbanist lines.

In a special meeting, the Council of the 72,000-population city endorsed the SmartCode in principle and authorized Mayor Randy Roach to pursue the establishment of a public-private partnership that would acquire and develop properties downtown. The Council also asked the state Gaming Board to give executives from Harrah’s more time to evaluate sites for a casino, so that a downtown location in accord with the charrette plans could be chosen.

The series of resolutions by Lake Charles, in the southwest corner of the state, gave an auspicious start to the statewide planning effort being carried out for the LRA by new urbanist firms: Calthorpe Associates of Berkeley, California; DPZ of Miami; and Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh. DPZ then started a Feb. 13-19 charrette in the Cajun southcentral region called South Acadiana, working on plans for three small communities: Abbeville (pop. 11,887 before the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), Delcambre (pop. 2,168), and Erath (pop. 2,187).

The last of the three charrettes is scheduled for March 7-14 in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans, where a focal point will be the unincorporated 8,100-person community of Arabi, contiguous to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. The DPZ charrettes will provide material that the LRA’s main planning contractor, Calthorpe Associates, can use in devising regional plans. The charrettes’ aim is to produce plans that can serve as prototypes for three different kinds of communities — first, downtowns in the Interstate 10 corridor that runs across Louisiana; second, small towns, villages, and hamlets; and finally, an urban neighborhood. Steven Oubre of Lafayette-based Architects Southwest, which designed a 325-acre River Ranch traditional neighborhood development, was the first Louisiana architect chosen to serve on the DPZ team.

The proposal for Lake Charles’s stagnant downtown includes an investment idea that Seth Harry and Chris Cole came up with: the establishment of a for-profit development company that would include both the city (which owns many downtown properties) and private owners. Harry said this would allow the municipality to “share in the potential upside of this initiative” and would give the municipality “greater tools and resources with which to facilitate the implementation of the plan.” A vision for the waterfront also emerged from the charrette, as did an affordable housing initiative that would involve construction of “Rita Cottages” or “Gulf Coast Cottages” — the Louisiana version of the Katrina Cottage first introduced in Mississippi. Cottages are seen as an alternative to FEMA trailer parks.

THE BIG PICTURE

Calthorpe Associates principal Timothy Rood said the regional plans will lay out “a universe of options” — scenarios of how South Louisiana may recover, what levels of protection from hurricanes and floods will be needed, what sort of environmental protection is called for, and what kind of economic renewal is anticipated. Full-day workshops for stakeholders on regional plans are to take place in May. With input from specialist teams and stakeholders, Calthorpe will work during the summer to assess the effects of the various scenarios on such things as taxes and risks. In the fall, public discussions will indicate what actions the communities feel comfortable taking.

Transportation improvements, including mass transit, will be part of Calthorpe’s focus. Rood said the area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is suffering “massive traffic jams” because of hurricane damage and the migration of population from New Orleans. “They’re only 60 miles apart and it can take two hours to drive it,” he said. “It’s almost like it’s fusing into one large metro area.” One proposal that’s been discussed is “running a couple of commuter trains between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with FEMA mitigation money,” Rood said. “That corridor will have a high demand, and definitely makes sense for transit.” Commuter service using buses has already begun.

The new urbanist-led recovery planning “has given people a real hope and a vision,” said Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, who is serving as liaison between the consultant team and the Authority, which was commissioned by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh will produce a toolkit for local jurisdictions, including a pattern book of building, landscape, neighborhood, and community design.

More than 300 long-term recovery planners from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies also have been compiling information and holding public meetings in the 19 parishes most affected by the hurricanes, Thomas said. Their findings will be delivered to Calthorpe Associates this spring. The intention, Rood said, is to “survey the plans that already existed and to assess the degree to which they’re still relevant.”

The hurricanes destroyed more than 200,000 homes and 18,000 businesses in South Louisiana, inflicting an estimated $70 billion to $130 billion in damage. Partly because of widespread resistance to trailer encampments known as “FEMAvilles,” the effort to provide trailers to displaced people has gone poorly in Louisiana, The New York Times reported. The temporary housing effort has proceeded better in Mississippi, where the devastation was less extensive and the governments better organized. Federal flood standards are expected to require that rebuilding take place at higher elevations. “Everyone in Louisiana is waiting with bated breath for FEMA advisories on elevations,” Rood said. Some of the preliminary FEMA elevations are expected in March and April.

“Neither the state nor the federal government can force local governments to do anything regarding land use,” Rood emphasized. “It will ultimately be up to each locality to decide for itself how to grow and build. We will want to provide good examples of how to do it right.” There is no guarantee that the LRA’s recommendations will get much consideration in New Orleans, which has its own recovery commission. But $6.2 billion in federal community development block grants is allocated by the LRA, so presumably the LRA will influence some outcomes.