Imagine…

Each weekday morning, I check ArchNewsNow, an architectural new aggregator, to see what’s being written about architecture in the English-speaking world press. This morning, I was momentarily surprised to see my father’s name in the listings. ANN had picked up his editorial in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle:

Let’s all imagine a new and very livable Gulf Coast
by Thomas L. McKittrick

Rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers about $200 billion. This enormous cost will doubtless be passed on to our children and grandchildren, so what kind of restored Gulf Coast should the taxpayers expect to be passed on to their heirs?

They should expect nothing less than well-planned, well-built, energy-efficient, self-sustaining new communities and infrastructure. These things are possible, particularly if certain ideas from the past are coupled with modern technologies to create sustainable new communities. Let’s explore this possibility.

Many of those whose homes and businesses were destroyed are anxious to rebuild exactly what they had before the storms, and resume their former lifestyles. But what of those less fortunate, whose pre-hurricane lives were a hand-to-mouth existence in squalid housing, with few of the benefits that many low-to-moderate income Americans are able to enjoy? Should the same ghettos be rebuilt, consigning their inhabitants to the same neglect as before? Or is there a better way to rebuild humane environments, with good access to jobs and health care, and to schools that are as good as those in more affluent neighborhoods? Who should decide what and where to rebuild?

These are questions that require careful study by experts in sociology, planning, architecture, education, health care and transportation, but only after the experts have a dialogue with the people whose lives will be affected. Is there a process that can allow all of this to happen?

Design professionals and elected officials frequently turn to public discussions of alternative solutions to growth or building issues, known as charettes, to present information and elicit opinions before deciding on a course of action. Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has embarked on such a process for rebuilding his state’s coastal region. He has brought in an experienced corporate CEO, Jim Barksdale, to head this effort, and an experienced planner and architect from Florida, Andres Duany, to organize a series of charettes in towns and cities on the Mississippi coast. These forums will introduce ideas about rebuilding possibilities, and allow the public to respond to the ideas or submit their own.

What information should charette participants be given, and what questions should they be asking? (read more here)

ANN also linked this morning to an article about the University of Lousiana’s project “A Call for Odes and Ideas, Proposals and Strategies and Everything in Between.”

Think you have a plan on how engineers should tackle the problem of the New Orleans’ levee system? Know a better way to distribute water and rations to impacted areas? Or how about how to recycle the rubble that is the Ninth Ward and the Gulf Coast?

No idea is a bad one.

And, the University of Louisiana’s School of Architecture and Design wants to hear yours. The school is asking for submissions as part of a recovery and relief project to help rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The project, “A Call for Odes and Ideas Proposals and Strategies and Everything in Between,” will be published in the spring as a resource for those charged with the rebuilding.

“We see this as a clearinghouse for ideas,” said Geoff Gjertson, a UL associate professor of architecture and co-director of UL’s Building Institute. “We feel that we have a responsibility to get a dialogue going about how to help, not just with the rebuilding process but the other issues and problems that have come up in the relief and recovery.”

Although the project is spearheaded by UL’s architecture and design faculty, the call for submissions isn’t just to designers or architects.

So far, submissions have included a poem about New Orleans levees and how they should be rebuilt, and practical ideas from a Washington State architect on restrictions needed for New Orleans homes regarding roof slopes and other building requirements.

“We purposely left it wide open. I’d like to see a child’s crayon sketch. I think it’s just as valid as anything else,” Gjertson said.

One of the greatest strengths that human beings have is our ability to imagine. Do you have thoughts, ideas, visions about rebuilding along the Gulf Coast? Pick up your pencil, your keyboard and mouse, your crayons. There’s much to be done, and imagining is the first step.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.