New Orleans Collaborative Planning: Faculty Research
Lisa Bates:
(Mis)uses of data: what counts as damage in post-Katrina New Orleans recovery planning
Lisa K. Bates and Rebekah A. Green
Post-disaster planning requires information, in particular data on the condition of the housing stock. Data on housing stock and damage estimates are collected at different times, by different actors, for different purposes and with different methodologies. With a variety of sources for housing damage information, these data can be misunderstood or misused in planning decisions. This paper considers the varying estimates of hurricane damage to housing in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. We present results of an evaluation of flood and structural damage to housing in comparison to data used in post-Katrina planning processes, concluding that extant data sources overstated destruction in the Ninth Ward. We suggest that planners more carefully consider issues in damage estimation methodology and implementation, assessing the quality of the data when making decisions about post-disaster resource allocation based upon damage estimates.
Housing Recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans: Small Rental Property Owners in the Ninth Ward
Lisa K. Bates
The vast majority of the housing stock in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans has been deemed substantially damaged or destroyed, including a significant number of low-cost rental units (FEMA 2006). Comerio (1997, 171) reports that in the typical post-disaster housing market only half of affordable rental housing units are ultimately repaired to habitable standards. Additionally, previously affordable housing may be re-leased at a higher rent due to owners’ financial issues. The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s Road Home Program attempts to overcome the typical obstacles to rebuilding rental housing by allocating funds within its Road Home Program for small landlords who own 1 to 4 rental units. These funds include both debt financing and grants that require maintaining affordable rents (LRA 24). However, in these areas of extensive damage and low rates of population, the financing available may not be enough to create incentives to rebuild this important sector of the housing market.
Property owners’ decision-making involves a financial calculation of available funding from the Road Home program and the cost of repairing damage to the unit, considering its potential rental income. This presents a complex financial decision for owners. This study will provide more information on the decision-making rationale of small property owners. I will inquire about the owners’ preparations for return and their reconstruction of rental units, the reasoning and decision-making factors they employ, perceptions of risk (both financial and physical) and their expectations for Road Home and other financing. The small property owner’s decision is likely also contingent on personal issues: For example, elderly owners of rental properties may not be returning to New Orleans, but will move in with children. Other owners may not wish to return to the city after resettling elsewhere and establishing jobs and school enrollment for their children. Still others may express a commitment to their neighborhoods that trumps expected short-term financial losses. The research will provide insights into the rationale of why owners choose to rebuild or to sell their properties. The results will point to potential programs or policies that could better support rebuilding affordable rental housing in disaster-impacted cities such as New Orleans. The increased understanding of housing investment behavior could also be applied to other distressed urban environments where policy-makers wish to provide incentives for property ownership and maintenance for neighborhood revitalization.
*Funded by UIUC’s Campus Research Board and the Social Science Research Council Small Grants program for Hurricane Katrina and Rebuilding the Gulf Coast.
Rob Olshansky:
Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans
Professor Olshansky has been studying the institutions, plans, and related actions
that have been evolving to guide the rebuilding of New Orleans. Having previously
studied post-disaster recovery planning in Kobe, Japan and Los Angeles, he sees
the rebuilding of New Orleans as a unique opportunity to investigate, as well
as assist, the process of reconstructing following a catastrophic urban disaster.
Post-disaster recovery poses many challenges to planners. The first is how to
manage the competing needs for speed and for deliberation. Damaged cities
must be rebuilt as quickly as possible, in order to restore lives and economies.
On the other hand, disasters provide unique opportunities to carefully and deliberately
plan for betterment. A second challenge is that of managing a large process
in a short timeframe, where the stakes are high, tolerance is low, and needs
are great.
The overall research questions are:
- How does one organize and finance
the rebuilding of a destroyed American city?
- What is the role of urban planning
in such a situation?
- How can we create a better place,
while also meeting immediate housing and economic needs?
- What lessons can we learn for
future catastrophic urban disasters?
Specifically, this research focuses on the following elements:
- structures of the various planning processes
- substantive issues under consideration
- opportunities for advancing risk reduction
- key players and their motivations
- milestone decisions
- purposes and goals of planning
This ongoing work has been supported by travel funding provided
by the Mid-America Earthquake Center and the Public Entity Risk
Institute. Visiting New Orleans approximately every one
to two months, Olshansky has been observing public meetings and
conducting interviews of key participants since late 2005. He
also served as an advisor to the Unified New Orleans Plan process
in late 2006.
Land Banking in the Reconstruction
of New Orleans
This project, funded by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy,
is a two-year (2007-2009) study of the process of land banking
in New Orleans. Land banking—strategic public acquisition
and disposition of parcels—will play a key role in the
redevelopment of New Orleans, and it will provide public opportunities
to shape urban development to meet planning goals of economic
development, targeted growth, and hazard mitigation. We
are particularly interested in how New Orleans uses the properties
it receives from the state’s “Road Home” program,
in which owners of flood-damaged homes could select to receive
either funding to assist reconstruction or to sell their property
to the state. New Orleans expects to receive approximately
7,000 parcels under this program. We are also interested
in how the city combines management of these parcels along with
several thousand blighted properties already in public ownership. We
are working in close cooperation with the New Orleans Redevelopment
Authority and the city’s Office of Recovery and Development
Administration.
We seek to observe and document the land banking process as it
unfolds. This includes not only management of publicly-owned
parcels, but also the individual Road Home decision processes
that will provide the parcels to public entities. In addition,
other collective actions may emerge, as individuals see opportunities
for improvement through cooperative development decisions.
Lessons will emerge over the months, revealing challenges in
implementing land banking and providing insights on how to overcome
those challenges. In addition, an important reason for
conducting this research is to understand the role of plans and
public information in influencing thousands of individual private
decisions.
Rebuilding New Orleans: Evaluating the
Post-Disaster Planning Process
Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project is a
collaboration between Professor Olshansky, Professor Emeritus
Lewis Hopkins, and planning consultant Laurie Johnson, AICP.
This research, set to begin in the summer of 2008, will study
how plans in New Orleans have affected reconstruction decisions
made by public organizations, private investors, and individuals.
Planning in practice is quite complicated, involving many actors
making many different types of plans. Plans are pieces
of information that help people to make decisions. The study
will rely on news accounts, plan documents, internal memos, interviews,
blogs, and over 100 hours of films of planning meetings to see
how plans affected specific reconstruction decisions.
This research responds to the critical opportunity to provide
knowledge that can help develop planning strategies following
the next catastrophic disaster. The results will help municipalities,
state agencies, and FEMA in organizing for reconstruction following
future catastrophic disasters. In addition, it will contribute
to urban planning education by broadening understanding of how
plans work.
Publications/Papers
Olshansky, Robert B., Laurie A. Johnson, Jedidiah
Horne, and Brendan Nee. “Planning for the Rebuilding of
New Orleans,” Journal of the American Planning Association, accepted,
publication expected Summer 2008.
Olshansky, Robert B., and Hopkins, Lewis D., “Plan is
a message, not the final word,” New Orleans Times-Picayune,
editorial page, March 12, 2007.
Olshansky, Robert B, “Planning after Hurricane Katrina,“ Journal
of the American Planning Association, 72(2): 147-153,
2006.
Olshansky, Robert B., “Rebuilding New Orleans,“ Social
Policy Magazine, 36(2): 17-19, 2006.
Selected Presentations
Olshansky, Robert B., “The Role of Plans in Post-Katrina
New Orleans,” presented at 2nd International Conference
on Urban Disaster Reduction, Taipei, Taiwan, November 27, 2007.
Olshansky, Robert B., “What We Know about Post-Disaster
Recovery,” presented at National Academy of Sciences, 21st
Disasters Roundtable Workshop: Recovering From Disaster, Washington,
D.C., October 17, 2007.
Johnson, Laurie A., and Olshansky, Robert B., “Pre-Disaster
Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” presented at National
Academy of Sciences, 21st Disasters Roundtable Workshop:
Recovering From Disaster, Washington, D.C., October 17, 2007.
Olshansky, Robert B., “Planning for the Rebuilding of
New Orleans,” presented at “Tuesdays at APA,” American
Planning Association National Office, Chicago, June 12, 2007.
Olshansky, Robert B., “A Unified Plan for New Orleans,” American
Planning Association National Conference, Philadelphia, April
15, 2007.
Olshansky, Robert B., “Sustainability and the Rebuilding
of New Orleans,” International Symposium on Global Sustainability,
Kyoto Sustainability Initiative, Kyoto University, January 16,
2007.
Olshansky, Robert B., “Recovering from Natural Disasters:
Reflections on Kobe, Northridge and New Orleans,” Department
of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, November 30,
2006.
Olshansky, Robert B., “Planning the Rebuilding of New
Orleans,” Presented at Public Policy Institute of California,
San Francisco, April 17, 2006 Planning for the Rebuilding
of New Orleans
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