Resettling the Gulf Region is Highly Questionable

BUFFALO, NY. -- The wisdom of attempting to resettle the Gulf region "is highly questionable," according to Alfred Price, associate professor and interim chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo.

"Researchers have warned for many years that a massive hurricane was destined to strike an unprepared New Orleans and drown it in a sea of water," Price says. "Not only was nothing done to address this, but President Bush went ahead and cut a vast amount of money from the area's Army Corps of Engineers, a principle agency responsible for flood control, levee maintenance and disaster engineering." 

In any case, Price says, there is no protection from a 25-foot wall of water across a vast area, no matter how you engineer protection.

"Building development in this area was a mistake from the beginning," he explains. "Hundreds of thousands of buildings were built below sea level and protective wetlands and the delta were destroyed in order to make more land available for below sea level development.

"This was a disaster waiting to happen. I don't see how there can be any justification for simply building in the same place again. It would not be unlikely that another Category 4 storm would destroy it the minute it goes up."

Price is particularly concerned about what will happen to the poor in this region. Decades of federal housing programs and urban housing practice has disenfranchised the poor and provoked widespread homelessness, he says. For these people natural disaster is even more calamitous than for others.

"These are people for whom not only home and job, but the entire network of public programs upon which they depend for survival -- public hospitals, social services, etc. -- have been wiped out. When the waters recede enough to provide for bathing, reduce health concerns and make potable water available, we will be left with an absolutely massive number of poor people for which we have absolutely no shelter and no plan.

"Many thousands of displaced citizens will be left homeless, jobless, destitute, with absolutely no money at all with which to rebuild. Furthermore the reduction of federal housing programs that began under President Reagan have left us with no real federal infrastructure with which to address housing for the poor on this scale."

Price envisions tent cities and thousands roaming like gypsies throughout the region unless agency politics are abandoned and there is a collaborative plan among a vast number agencies to develop specific plans for housing and social services for the poor.

"Unfortunately, over the last 50 years, it rarely happens that such efforts are coordinated much less collaborative," he says.

Alfred Price
Associate Professor and Interim Chair
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
University at Buffalo
(716) 829-2133, ext. 213
adprice@buffalo.edu
http://www.ap.buffalo.edu/planning/people/price.asp