Ideas for Mississippi’s coast ignite enthusiasm, face FEMA resistance
New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2005
New urbanist “mega-charrette” calls for boulevards, rail transit, mixed uses, and walkable neighborhoods in a devastated 11-city region.
The people of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast have begun taking a series of previously unfathomable mental leaps, thanks to an extraordinary new urbanist charrette that captured the imagination of the region this fall.
Over the course of a nonstop week of work in mid-October, 120 new urbanists — professionals from 22 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, Britain, and Belgium — walked and rode through the rubble-strewn communities of the coast and then produced the most far-reaching set of recommendations South Mississippi has even seen.
Amid tens of thousands of collapsed houses and destroyed businesses, the leaders of the Gulf Coast were exhorted to think big — to plan something much more ambitious than simply returning their communities to the way they looked prior to Hurricane Katrina. Before the wind and water leveled substantial sections of the coastal communities on Aug. 29, old urban centers were eroding.
