New Orleans residents given four months to revive neighbourhoods

[Clara T]

New Orleans residents given four months to revive neighbourhoods

· Unsustainable areas may be turned into parks
· City's revival plan calls for new jazz area and rail links

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Thursday January 12, 2006
The Guardian

Residents of the most devastated areas of New Orleans reacted angrily yesterday to a blueprint for rebuilding the city that gives them four months to prove they can bring their neighbourhoods back to life or face the prospect of their homes being turned into parks or marshland.

The first comprehensive plan for how the city should be put back together following Hurricane Katrina, unveiled by New Orleans' mayor Ray Nagin yesterday, also includes lofty plans to build a light railway system and recreate a jazz district in what was once the red-light area of the city. The multibillion dollar proposals prioritise improving hurricane defences and the elimination of a 76-mile shipping canal blamed for much of the flooding.

The blueprint, which calls for a much smaller city, estimating that just half of the 500,000 people who lived there before Hurricane Katrina will resettle in the next two years, drew loud boos and shouts of anger from residents who crowded a downtown hotel meeting room for its announcement.

"I'm ready to rebuild. I'm not going to let you take everything. I'm ready to fight to get my property together," one man shouted from the back of the room.
According to Reuters, Carolyn Parker, a resident of the ruined Lower Ninth ward, told the panel: "I don't think it's right that you try to take my property. "Over my dead body. I didn't die with Katrina."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1684498,00.html