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In jr. high there was a girl named Katrina(the only one I've ever known) that I really didn't like. It adds an extra little bit of *yuck* whenever I think of the hurricane and what happened to the Gulf Coast.

Not that I needed any more yuck, of course. You can read any number of bloggers sympathize with or criticize various groups of human beings about the situation they find themselves in or the choices they made during the aftermath of the storm, and I don't really feel like I can add much, but it can't help but be on everyone's mind, including my own.

One of the things that occurred to me today was the enormity of the task of resettling New Orleans. I know there are some who don't want to rebuild it, but I think that we can't help but rebuild it. I know that many of the residents of smaller towns in Mississippi and Louisiana will be forgotten as time passes, like the victims of Floyd in 1999. But losing New Orleans would be too much of a shock for the nation. I think it's somewhat analagous to 9/11 in a way -- if 20 random buildings in 20 cities had been attacked, I don't think we would have the same kind of wrangle about what would replace them. But because the WTC was so iconic, people felt it just had to get replaced by something equally, if not more symbolic.

While there were no terrorists involved in Hurricane Katrina, I think people will feel the same way about New Orleans. You can't just give up on a whole city, especially one so unique and steeped in history.

So what's going to happen? I saw one of the holdouts getting interviewed saying that he wasn't going to leave because he doesn't have any papers for his home and he'll lose everything if he goes. I don't know what he meant by that exactly, but what I think he means is that he doesn't have an official deed to his house or insurance or anything. I'm sure that a lot of those homes in the poorer sections of the city were passed down to children or sold off the books to friends or neighbors to avoid taxes and legal fees.

But even if there were paperwork available for everyone, resettlement will be a mess. Most of those homes were timber framed and will have soaked up a lot of contaminated water making them weak and hazardous to the health of anyone who might want to live there, so they'll have to be torn down. With much of the city levelled and lots of people looking to return, what will they put in to take it's place? Will it be lots of cookie-cutter housing projects? Probably. Undoubtedly Habitat for Humanity will get involved as well.

What I hope is that we'll take this opportunity to bring in some design professionals to take a look at what will be a unique opportunity in the history of the U.S. -- building an entire city from scratch. Naturally, I will offer them my Babble/On plans free of charge, but I'm sure plenty of architects and engineers would jump at the chance to take on the challenge of designing housing for thousands of people in a uniquely-challenging environment.

I will be very interested in seeing how the government, humanitarian organizations and private citizens rise to the challenge of building most of a city from scratch, an urban planners dream.