Ninth Ward

My ecology class made our final trip of the semester yesterday.  This trip was a little different from the others.  We went to the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.  This was a very eye opening trip.  The Ninth Ward is still in pretty bad shape over four years after Katrina decimated the area.  There were over 1,000 fatalities in the Lower Ninth and over 3,000 homes were lost.  Most of the homes in the area were flooded for over a month.

Large areas are still like ghost towns.  It's really kinda creepy.  There are a lot of homes like the one in the picture that look like they have not been touched since Katrina came through.  Many of the other homes have been torn down and only the concrete foundations remain.  Very few businesses have come back into the area (mainly because there still aren't many people back) so the people have to go across the bridge to NO for simple tasks like getting groceries.  The people that are back clearly feel as though that the Lower Ninth is there home or there is no way they would have come back with all the devastation that is very prevalent.  The area still has a long way to go but progress is being made in many areas. 

Brad Pitt has been very influential in a program called Make it Right.  He is helping to rebuild homes in the neighborhoods especially in the area right where the levee broke flooding the entire Ninth Ward.  They are building highly sustainable and architecturally green, storm resistant homes for the owners of land in the surrounding neighborhoods.  These people have the choice of selecting from a variety of different architectural styles for their homes, all of them being very contemporary looking.  They are hoping to bring 150 families back to the Lower Ninth through the program.

In addition to the homes they are also trying to rebuild the community with native landscaping, micro-farms, rain gardens, and new streets.  The goal of all the new construction is to make a community that will be more storm resistant if a situation similar to Katrina happens again (which it shouldn't if the Army Corps of Engineers got it right this time!). 

Check out the websites that I linked for some more info on the programs that are happening to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward currently.  It's all about sustainable design.  Sustainable design is the future, hopefully it will get be a job when I am done being abused by school. 

http://www.makeitrightnola.org/ 

http://www.globalgreen.org/neworleans/holycross/

Pretty cool view looking across the Mississippi to downtown New Orleans from on top of a levee in the Lower Ninth.