Twenty Ideas For Rebuilding New Orleans

Among the ideas:

"2) Create a Virtual New Orleans

To accomplish the restoration of social capital, and to create a process by which locals and others can contribute to the rebuilding of the city, create a Web site where people can associate around the identities and social structures that tied them together in New Orleans. Such a site, a hub of podcasts, chat rooms, bulletin boards, forums, and other tools, will come to mirror the vitality of the city itself, and keep its culture alive through the diaspora.

20) Bring Back Corner Stores

The corner store was the anchor of New Orleans neighborhoods for more than a century. The convenience store for pedestrians, it was a place where people ran into each other, and a place where bulletin boards made connections possible. The store is so important an institution that the New Urbanists suggest subsidizing it as a gathering place and center of community in their developments. Perhaps the functions of the corner store can be combined with those of a café-bakery or gourmet food store, to fit the contemporary market."

Thanks to BRUCE ROSEN