Dead Cities, part 2

Joel Garreau weighed in yesterday on whether New Orleans should (or can) be rebuilt. He's always smart and readable; if you haven't read Edge City you should go get it. It's a brilliant, well-reported take on urban theory and how cities are changing. Anyway, here Garreau lays out the etiology of New Orleans' ongoing demise:

Throughout the world, you see an increasing distinction between "port" and "city." As long as a port needed stevedores and recreational areas for sailors, cities like New Orleans -- or Baltimore or Rotterdam -- thrived. Today, however, the measure of a port is how quickly it can load or unload a ship and return it to sea. That process is measured in hours. It is the product of extremely sophisticated automation, which requires some very skilled people but does not create remotely enough jobs to support a city of half a million or so.



The dazzling Offshore Oil Port, for example, employs only about 100 people. Even the specialized Port of New Orleans, which handles things like coffee, steel and cruise boats, only needs 2,500 people on an average day, LaGrange says. The Warehouse District was being turned into trendy condos.



Compare that to the tourism industry, which employs about 25,000 people in the arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodation and food sectors -- some 5 percent of the city's former population, according to the census.



New Orleans's economy is vividly illustrated by its supply of white-collar jobs. Its Central Business District has not added a new office building since 1989, according to Southeast Real Estate Business. It has 13.5 million square feet of leasable office space -- not much bigger than Bethesda/Chevy Chase, where rents are twice as high. The office vacancy rate in New Orleans is an unhealthy 16 percent and the only reason it isn't worse is that 3 million square feet have been remade as hotels, apartments and condominiums.

I've been thinking for a while that cities are essentially machines for getting rid of water, something at which New Orleans has obviously failed. But cities are also machines not just for living (to mangle a Le Corbusier quote), but for making a life. I'm certainly not above having loved the touristy parts of New Orleans, but that city failed to elevate its people, and the people failed to elevate the city. You can't rebuild something that hasn't really been there for 100 years anyway.