Chris Bickford

Louisiana, 2010

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It was a horrible place to build a city.  Malaria-ridden swamps, unbearably humid summers, ground so soft you could barely sink a post into it without it keeling over; prone to flooding from the Mississippi and storm surges from Gulf Coast hurricanes.  A network of bayous, delta sludge, and barrier islands so complex and shallow that only the smallest boats could float in them, and only the canniest of pilots could navigate them.   And yet it was the best place to build the city that had to be built there.   In the short bend of the Mississippi that brings it within a couple of miles of Lake Pontchartrain, a broad saltwater estuary that opens into the Gulf of Mexico, on ground supported by natural levees built up from thousands of years of silting, the Crescent City of New Orleans was built as the final continental destination for the abundance of goods that flowed downriver from the incomparably rich land to the north, a watershed that stretches from the Appalachian Mountains in the East to the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains to the West, with fingers reaching as far north as Minnesota, as far East as Virginia and North Carolina,  and as far west as Montana….Further downriver from New Orleans, the Mississippi becomes an unnavigable mess of delta and bayou, so the early rafts and barges that floated down the Mississippi with furs, produce, timber, sugar, and cotton would stop at the crook in the river, and unload their cargo in the port area around what is now the French Market.  The rafts would be dismantled for timber to build houses, and the goods would be portaged up Esplanade Avenue and out to the ships moored in Lake Pontchartrain; from there they would make their stops in Havana and Hispaniola before heading through the straits of Florida, and up the Gulf Stream to Charleston, Norfolk, New York, Lisbon, Seville, London, and Le Havre.

For the first two hundred plus years of her existence, New Orleans’ boundaries were defined by the bayou.   The Vieux Carré, now known as the French Quarter, was the highest ground, and was thus settled first.  The Protestant Anglo-Saxons from the north who moved down after the Louisiana Purchase settled the land west of Canal Street, which was a little soggy but high enough in places to support their grand antebellum mansions.  Eventually land was filled in to form plantations, which were later divided up into “Faubourgs” by the plantation owners to create the first suburbs, Faubourg Marigny and Faubourg Tremé.   But these low-lying areas were still subject to flooding, and thus became the domain of Irish, Croatian, and Italian immigrants, as well as the large population of free blacks that continued to grow and flourish in tolerant New Orleans.

The outlying areas of the city, by necessity, remained unbuildable, uninhabitable wetlands.  Little by little the swampland was drained by primitive pumping systems and filled in, and small communities of African-Americans, Irish and German Immigrants, Creoles, and other families too poor to live in the safer, drier areas of the city began to populate the area east of the city.   The area, known as the Ninth Ward, became a stronghold of black culture in the early part of the twentieth century.

In the early 1920’s an industrial canal was cut through the heart of the Ninth Ward to connect the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain.  Along with the canal came an extensive levee system and a more reliable drainage and pumping system, but it bisected the Ninth Ward into two parts, “Upper”, meaning upriver, and “Lower”, meaning downriver.

The Lower Ninth Ward flourished in the middle part of the century, an almost rural outpost of tightly-knit families that grew corn and raised chickens and looked after each other.  Jobs on the waterfront were plentiful, and social clubs and schools provided for strong community activism.   But as the shipping industry became more and more mechanized, jobs in the area became harder and harder to find, and the neighborhood began the all-too familiar sink into urban decay that has plagued so many African-American communities in the contemporary era.  Still, it remained home to a strong and vital community.  Home-ownership in the Lower Ninth Ward at the time of Katrina was higher than in any other neighborhood in the city, and the neighborhood continued to produce some of the finest jazz and R&B musicians in the country.

Now all that is gone.   Walk through the section of the Lower Ninth Ward north of Claiborne avenue which was hit hardest by the storm, and you will see blocks and blocks of abandoned lots, tall grass and oak trees swaying in the delta breeze.   Here and there a gutted house, a lone cement stoop, a stack of old tires surreptitiously dumped in the middle of the night.   Only two houses in the roughly three-square-mile area survived the flood intact, and rebuilding has been slow and hampered by insurance wrangles, government ineptitude, legal battles, and contractor fraud.   Currently the occupancy rate is less than one house per city block.   The once tightly-knit community has been scattered to the winds, to Baton Rouge and Houston and Chicago and Boston; and though many are determined to return home, some have already spent five years putting down roots elsewhere, and in all likelihood could not afford or stand to uproot their families again, even to return to their old home, which right now looks more like an abandoned city park than a community.

And yet, change is coming, growth is happening, and people are returning.  Some folks have rebuilt their houses thanks to good insurance and plain old hard work.   Others are being aided by forward-thinking non-profit groups such as Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Initiative and the Common Ground Collective, which are taking the opportunity to build safer and more sustainable houses, and are developing earthworks systems to address some of the geographic and ecological issues of the Lower Ninth with permaculture-style engineering.   Some have sold their land to independent contractors who are building houses with stricter covenants.  And some have been aided by religious and charitable groups and school volunteers from all around the country, who have contributed untold amounts of time and money to help the Lower Ninth become home again.

There were many mistakes made before, during, and after Katrina, all of which have been well-documented and beyond the scope of this post.  And it may seem outrageous to some that so little progress seems to have been made over the last five years.  But as a very wise man once said, “only bad change happens quickly”.    Good change takes time.   And what is happening now in the Lower Ninth, is good change.  And it’s taking time.