Curitiba's Lessons for New Orleans

"New Orleans is quickly becoming a battleground for competing ideologies about how Americans should live. Advocates of federal housing, enemies of sprawl, champions of preservation, defenders of big business, community activists, environmentalists, oil lobbyists are all chiming in with a vision.

"For the reconstruction of New Orleans to succeed, planners, architects, citizens and officials will have to discover a new equilibrium between their past and their aspirations. Poverty existed before Katrina, and poverty will return. The question is whether it can have more dignity than it did before...the decisions where and how to rebuild can be guided by a set of principles that have a track record of success. The precepts are clear.

"Extend the center's basic street grid and density into each reclaimed zone. Draw on the city's treasury of traditional architectural forms. Channel car traffic toward the periphery and connect neighborhoods by a network of bus corridors modeled on Curitiba's. Plan for a diverse economy and provide a basic quality of life high enough to attract new business. Place an architect or a planner, not a bureaucrat or a general, in charge of rebuilding. Be willing to import wisdom from abroad."