Redefining The New Urbanism In The Context Of Katrina

"'The gift the New Urbanists brought was catalyst projects,' Ricky Mathews, the forty-eight-year-old publisher of the Sun Herald, told me, sitting in his office with a sketch of the reimagined Biloxi on the wall behind him. 'They gave people a chance to think about something they didn't realize they could think about at that stage of the game.'

Mathews had survived his own ordeal during the stormâ€"his family watched as churning waters swept away the neighboring house; a corpse was draped in a nearby treeâ€"but just a week later he found himself talking Big Picture with Governor Haley Barbour, Mississippi Development Authority Director Leland Speed, and Governor's Commission Chairman Jim Barksdale. Michael Barranco, a New Urbanist architect in Jackson, had phoned Speed to suggest a charrette led by DPZ, the firm that Duany runs with his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Speed, a long-time real-estate developer, was already a convert. He had read Suburban Nation, a New Urbanist Bible of sorts co-authored by Duany and Plater-Zyberk, and had been so taken with the ideas within that he had given some twenty copies to various mayors around the state. Speed and Barranco called Duany, and a few days later the three gathered in Jackson to meet with Barksdale and the Governor.

Barbour was delayed by several hours, and so Duany, not one to sit still, asked Barksdale for a tour of a nearby Nissan plant. The two hit it off. 'Jim and Andres walked out the door,' Speed said. 'And when they came back, I guess I'd say they had bonded.' When the Governor arrived, worn-out and in no mood for long lectures on land-use patterns, 'he looked at me and Barksdale,' Speed recalled. 'He said "Are you two guys for this?" We said, 'Very definitely.' He said, 'Let's go.' And we were off and running.'"