What to Do in New Orleans?

Writing in our (mine, Aaron Edlin's, and Joe Stiglitz's) The Economists' Voice http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol2/iss4/art4/, the extremely wise Ed Glaeser worries about whether rebuilding all of New Orleans makes sense. It may well cost hundreds of thousands of per New Orleans family to rebuild and protect from future hurricanes. Wouldn't it be better to rebuild fewer sub-sea level houses and build more above sea-level houses along, say, the road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge? Or to simply give people the money and let them choose whether to spend it rebuilding in New Orleans or keeping it as a nest egg and moving to Phoenix, San Jose, or Anchorage?

There are a bunch of non-convexities here: the cost of protecting future New Orleans from future hurricanes is not proportional to how many people live in the city itself. And there are very good reasons to have a City of New Orleans: the entertainment and historic district of the French Quarter, the great transshipment between river barges and ocean-going container ships, and the administration of the Gulf oil and gas industry. But are there good reasons to have a lot of people living below water level in the shadow of Lake Pontchartrain?

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

Some demographic trends for the next several decades:

1. more people are moving to coastal ares, many in area subject to hurricanes

2. more people are moving to the southwest, an area of chronic water shortages

Question: how much money will the federal government spend subsidizing foolish or dysfunctional behavior?

I want to see New Orleans rebuilt, but not in a foolish manner with my tax dollars. And if people were too irresponsble to carry proper insurance, why should I subsidize them (excluding the very poor and people who got caught between the casualty insurance and flood insurance carriers)?

[aeolius]

Galviston after their awful hurricane rebuild the city what some ten feet higher. NO should do the same. There are endless truckloads of debris to remove. Much of it could be used as landfill to raise the low parts of NO before reconstruction. Then the levees could be replaced to protect land which is above sea level. But that would make sense so it will never happen.

[Tom Cecere]

The attachment of people to their homes is deeply embedded and not normally subject to strictly analytical thinking. I'm sure a capital asset model would tell us to put the houses in Arkansas someplace. But that's not what these people need.

There are some things for which you buy insurance and some things so outside the "normal" disaster that it makes no sense to buy insurance. One of the greatest levels of common agreement about government in the last 10 years was the sense that we should have a federal government that can warn, ameliorate the suffering, and help rebuild lives and homes in such a situation. Do we have to pay for it? Sure...it's called "taxes".

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Do we have to pay for it? Sure...it's called "taxes".

But how much dysfunctional behavior do we pay for?

How many times do we rebuild the same Florida beach house?

Do we rebuild NOLA "as was" because people are sentimental about their houses?

[ken melvin]

Few years back, at a symposium on ocean wave energy, an Irish engineer told of mounting a Well's turbine type device in a blow hole type mounting engineered to meet one hundred year wave specs requirements, insuring the thing, and putting it on line only to have a hundred-fifty year wave come along the first month and blow the whole apparatus high into the air. Between 1969 and 2005 implies Katrina a 35 year storm. Even if they rebuild New Orleans, when the next Katrina hits in 35 or less years will they then again rebuild? If the hurricane frequency becomes obviously greater, at what point will they say no mas? When the city started sinking and the river bed began to rise praying was Ok but someone should have started doing some arithmetic. When sea level rises one foot or the land subsides one foot, is the answer one foot of dirt forty foot wide five hundred miles long to be repeated at least once every few years forever?

I suspect that whatever the amount spent on recovery an amount at least equal that amount should be spent in an effort to reduce damage from future hurricanes. If you look at such NASA images as shown here http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17038 and accept that these waters are going to continue to get hotter, that the sea levels will continue to rise, that NO will continue sinking, that the barrier wetlands will continue to diminish, that coastal population density is inordinately high, and that the Mississippi River bed will continue to rise , unless significant changes are made; the recovery money, whatever the amount, will be for naught.

[me]

How many times do we rebuild the same Florida beach house?

If this was Rush limbaugh's house this discussion wouldn't even be taking place. We surely don't want to waste tax dollars on the poor.

[save_the_rustbelt]

I've yet to meet a poor person with a $500,000 beach house on a tidal plain.

If Rush Limbaugh wants to buy risky property he can insure it in theopen market rather than depend on us to rebuild it.

[RTVF]

can't we just get tons and tons and tons of soil and raise the low-lying parts up to sea level?

[bncthor]

Perhaps, it would be best to allow non-government subsidized private market forces to decide the question of rebuilding New Orleans or not, as well as similar events.

[Tom Cecere]

Rustbelt, I can see your point. I've often railed against rebuilding beachfront erosion housing (as well as California Cliff-dwelling). But the city of New Orleans is an American treasure. Should we be sensible? Sure. Can we figure it out? I would think so.

Of course, we should have a carbon tax to pay for all these disasters.

[Davis X. Machina]

What happens if the Atchafalaya catches the Mississippi, which is what it's been trying to do for a century, and finds a new outlet south and west of New Orleans?

It seems like human engineering can postpone, but not prevent, such things.

[marquer]

RTVF:

>can't we just get tons and tons and tons
>of soil and raise the low-lying parts up
>to sea level?

(Something similar is suggested by aeolius in using debris instead of soil.)

The fundamental civil engineering issue which makes elevated landfill a nonstarter in N'Awlins is the underlayment. Or lack of same.

We are not presented with a situation in which we can excavate to X meters in depth, find a solid footing on rock, and refill to an arbitrary height.

Instead, there's no there there to build upon. The entire city floats on top of an impossibly deep pile of alluvial mud. Which, when it is topped with fill of any sort, promptly and unhelpfully compacts and flows so as to defeat the original purpose. There are numerous disheartening attempts in the archives.

Honestly, the only plausible engineering solution in the long term may be to assume as the key design point that the bowl will fill with regularity, and rework NOLA as a raft city entirely disconnected from the underlying "soil".

[Richard]

I am more than a little uncomfortable about citing cost/ value issues here in considering the hubris of rebuilding NOLA. What is really being discussed is rebuilding of the Ninth Ward, which is largely poor, and black. But I don't hear those same cost/value worries raised about the hubris of rebuilding an enormous concrete needle on the spot where the towers fell. NOLA is the gateway to the heart and soul of the country. And I don't just mean the economy. Go fix yourself a bowl of gumbo, and while you are at it listen to some jazz, or blues, or rock and roll. Then remind yourself that without that fecund swamp of the Ninth Ward just how much poorer our national life would be. We owe those poor people for much of the richness we take pride in as Americans. Only arrogance and hubris blinds us to that. Of course we should rebuild. It's the least we can do.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Richard:

No one has advocated throwing poor people to the wolves.

The question is "should be spend billions to rebuild their housing in a tidal flood plain adjacent to a shaky set of levies which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"

Should we gamble their homes and lives? Again?

Two hundred years ago NOLA was built where it was for reasons which made sense at that time. Perhaps this no longer makes sense.

[me]

"The question is "should be spend billions to rebuild their housing in a tidal flood plain adjacent to a shaky set of levies which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"

If we are to continue to rebuiole barrier islands for the rich, then we may as well rebuild the 9th ward. at least in return, they run the docks that allow the Mississippi to make the middle US productive and competitive. Can't really say the same thing for those rich folks on the barrier islands.

[richard]

You ask: "The question is "should we spend billions to rebuild their housing in a tidal flood plain adjacent to a shaky set of levies which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"
Let me recontextualize your question: "The question is "should we spend billions to rebuild their housing in a vast Iraqi desert adjacent to a shaky set of countries which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"
We already did that one half way around the globe. Why wouldn't we want to bring it home?

[Richard]

You ask: "The question is "should we spend billions to rebuild their housing in a tidal flood plain adjacent to a shaky set of levies which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"
Let me recontextualize your question: "The question is "should we spend billions to rebuild their housing in a vast Iraqi desert adjacent to a shaky set of countries which can never be made absolutely storm proof?"
We already did that one half way around the globe. Why wouldn't we want to bring it home?

[don majors]

The USA has a great wealth of talent across the nation. Our musical fecundity is not dependent upon any specific city or state. Certain performances of a Canton Symphony (i.e.) surpass that of a NYC or LA ensemble. The point being: that assertions of debt to a certain region of origin does not trump artistic or economic realities. In a sense this past history is irrelevant.

At the risk of being a "bad person", I think the scale of benefit awards to 9/11 survivors was bad public policy. The same case can be made for the Freedom Tower because all this policy evolves from the pursuasive power of certain locations and personalities. Extravagent political spending on war, safety, disaster relief needs correction because they cannot be universally applied. Budgets and spending need control.

NOLA and it's tourist draws will survive. Let's be reasonable. Fairness please.

[Richard]

Don Majors,
Despite the great and dysfunctional wealth of talent our nation possesses, specific cities do matter. New Orleans is a numenal construct in our national psyche, but it is anchored to the reality of an aluveal mudflow relentlessly and inexorably born away by that Old Man River. New York matters. Not paying the debt to key structural elements of certain regions of origin of the body politic, even those that keep sliding away, rusting and crumling into dust at our feet will just as inexorably impoverish us all.

[don majors]

Richard,
Exactly. Ozymandias wouldn't believe the state of impermanence.

"Shelley evidently wrote this sonnet at Marlow in friendly competition with Horace Smith, whose own sonnet of the same name was published Feb. 1, 1818, also in The Examiner, no. 527, p. 73:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desart knows: --
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand."
-- The City's gone, --
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, -- and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Horace Smith

[Richard]

Don Majors,

Why you old gothic romantic you. I misunderestimated. so if I respond with:
"I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !"
does the frankensteinian image of transplanted images of a superdome appear too ghoulish or does it wear it's head like a Luddite Saint in a Mardi Gras of the mind?

[david]

If the alternative is shipping more water to Phoenix, I say rebuild New Orleans and double its size.

[jerry]

Uh, I visited a primitive beach community once. It was built on stilts.

And once upon a time, I lived in the Berkeley Hills within 100 feet of where the fire of 1991 killed 25 people, destroyed 2449 homes, and 437 apartment and condominiums.

Fire also wasted much of Berkeley in 1923, burning 130 acres, 584 buildings, and causing $10 million in damages while coming from the hills down to the flats.

And then again in 1970, a fire in the East Bay Hills southeast of the University of California Berkeley campus destroyed 38 homes, damaged 7 others, and caused $3.5 million in damages. Ironically, some of the homes destroyed in that fire were rebuilt, then destroyed again in the 1991 blaze.

And December 1980 saw yet another fire, this one emerging from Wildcat Canyon located just north of the 1991 fire in Berkeley to destroy 6 homes and injure 3 people within 20 minutes.

Sources: http://www.firewise.org/pubs/theOaklandBerkeleyHillsFire/background.html and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Hills_firestorm

The Hayward fault runs right underneath the CAL Stadium.

I don't hear anyone calling for evacuation of Berkeley.

I grew up in Los Angeles where fire turned out to be responsible for much of modern culture (LA Woman, that is.)

Right now I live in HeatRelatedDeathLand, aka, BigNukePlantGoBoom Country. I used to live in Earthquakistan and HillsRBurningville. I prefer Earthquakistan to IceStormLand and HurricaneShoals. Of course there is also TornadoVille and the DustBowl.

I say rebuild New Orleans, ensure that homes built below flood level are built on stilts, give credits to the poor and the prior owners, and start with wetlands restoration and doing what is needed to keep the ground from subsiding.

And g-d forbid my kids are ever forced to go near IntelligentDesignuhstan.

[jjb2]

Is Katrina the costliest natural disaster in US history(in dollars, not lives)? It depends on how you measure it. In terms of the damage as a percentage of GDP it is in the same league as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1927 Mississippi Flood. Reliable figures are really hard to get by googling, but the 1906 quake is about 1.5 - 2% of GDP, the Mississippi Flood 1-3% (the upper estimate came from a friend who has read up on this -- I'll have to get his source...), and Katrina ~1.5 - 2%. Order or magnitude estimates to be sure, but these figures astonished me.

...which reminds me that I must get a copy of "Rising Tide" by John Barry about the 1927 Flood.

[don majors]

Doubloons to you Richard:
...then the Ludites can reconvene for another regular restorative attempt to repeatedly recover and re-roof that domed ice cave. The third time could be a charm (but who counts?).

It's only money. They print it and burn it daily.

[Richard]

Don,

It's not only money, it's currency. And not spending is like... well, like turning off the current to a section of the country.

[theorajones]

This notion that people should just move someplace "safer" is, I'm sorry, a stupid one.

For example, what if all the people from New Orleans moved to Missouri, well outside all the rivers' flood zones? They'd be safe, right?

Wrong. They'd have traded up from floods to earthquakes. The biggest earthquake in American history wasn't in California. It was in New Madrid, MO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Fault

My point is, things change constantly and safe today is dangerous tomorrow. Furthermore, things in the US that have been safe "forever" haven't likely been around all that long. I mean, in most of the US we've got less than 500 years of accessible history to draw on when doing urban planning.

Yes, it's a bad idea to build a city in a flood zone. But, given where our cities are, it's inevitable that it will make more sense to keep any number of cities in a flood zone than it will be to move them out of the flood zone. THis will be more and more true as global warming moves coastlines inland, and cities settle due to aging.

Why don't we look at this as an opportunity to figure out how to better protect our cities from flooding them through better engineering, construction laws, and zoning regulations (like, um, putting mech rooms on the 5th floor instead of in the basement? Designing flood-tolerant sewage systems?).

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to me to do that than it does to tell people to trade economic opportunity (and culture and family and everything else) for a safety somewhere else that probably doesn't exist.