From floating homes to green building to a public housing country club, the city of New Orleans has been pushed to take creative measures towards rebuilding and recovering after Hurricane Katrina.
"New Orleans was not defined by its spirit of innovation in the decades preceding Hurricane Katrina. But the flood that changed everything two years ago has changed that too: Today, by accident and by necessity, this city is awash in ideas: the new and the ambitious, the au courant and avant-garde, the idealistic and the slightly nutty."
"The New Orleans public education system, long considered one of most ineffective in the nation, has been revitalized with a grand experiment in charter schools; more than half of the city's public campuses are charters, the highest percentage of any major metropolis."
"The city housing authority hopes to transform the shuttered St. Bernard Projects, once one of its most notoriously violent properties, into something akin to a public-housing country club with two 18-hole championship golf courses and a 45,000-square-foot YMCA."
"Environmental groups have swept into New Orleans, preaching a gospel of green building, solar power and other ideas familiar in Santa Cruz or Santa Monica but rather exotic here."
Read the full story: Old city revels in a new spirit of innovation
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
California plans to bury El Niño’s downpour
If the state plays its cards right, it may be able to store a billion acre-feet of El Niño’s water in aquifers.
Desperate measures: Advocates weigh draining Lake Powell to fill Colorado River
Draining the reservoir could reduce evaporation losses by a couple hundred thousand acre-feet.
Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax survives legal challenge
A panel of judges found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate injury as a result of New York City's implementation of the tax.
Eastern Nebraska is running out of electricity
Data centers and electrification are straining eastern Nebraska’s grid, throttling economic development.
Seattle passes record-breaking transit services expansion
Proposition 1 will double the city’s transit tax to add 95,000 more bus trips and preserve 180,000 bus trips annually.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
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Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority