Dreier: Katrina and Power in America

From the abstract:

The Katrina disaster exposed the major fault lines of American society and politics: class and race. It offers lessons for urban scholars and practitioners. Katrina was a human-made disaster more than a natural disaster. The conditions that led to the disaster, and the response by government officials, were the result of policy choices. Government incompetence was an outgrowth of a more serious indifference to the plight of cities and the poor. As a result, the opportunity to reconstruct New Orleans as part of a bold regional renewal plan was lost. Whatever positive things happen in Katrina’s aftermath will be due, in large measure, to the long-term work of grassroots community and union-organizing groups who mobilized quickly to provide a voice for the have-nots and who found allies among professionals to help formulate alternative plans to those developed by business and political elites. (March, 2006)

From the journal article:

"It is instructive to compare the Katrina aftermath with the similar dynamic that occurred after the April 1992 Los Angeles riots. For years, urban scholars and activists had warned that our cities were ticking time bombs, waiting to explode. When the riots eruptedâ€"theworst civil disorder in American historyâ€" -- many hoped that it would catalyze a major national commitment to revitalize the citiesâ€"an urban Marshall Plan.

...Both suburban sprawl and concentrated urban poverty are economically inefficient, socially unfair, and environmentally wasteful. Of course, we cannot turn back the clock. But just as we spent trillions of federal dollars to lure people and jobs to the suburbs, we must develop an equally ambitious plan to improve the fiscal condition of our cities and older suburbs, to limit the economic competition between municipalities (for the latest shopping mall or Wal-Marts, for example) that fuels further sprawl, to reduce widening economic disparities between the rich and poor, and to help lift the poor out of

poverty with decent jobs, adequate health care, wellfunded schools, and access to public transit and affordable housing outside ghettos and barrios (Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2005; Rusk 1999).

Katrina unveiled the human disaster at hand as a result of several decades of the ascendancy of right-wing ideas and corporate domination of the federal government, which extols market forces, individualism, and private charity over public responsibility and the common good. It underscores the need to reorder national priorities."

[Editor's note: SAGE Publications has made 7 journals, including Urban Affairs Review, available online until the May 31 2006. Nonsubscribers can register for a free account through May 31, 2006 to read this article for free.]