Charles Buki

Challenges that strong and weak markets alike share

In St Bernard Parish, it took almost 7 months for the crickets and other insects to return after Katrina. In that period there was silence at night to go with the darkness.<br /> <br /> But the first plans for recovery were delivered inside a mere 80 days, during which time none of the people were talked with or listened to except for the wham bam ty m&#39;amisms that are the lifeblood of the charrette.  <br /> <br /> Is it any wonder there are two disasters to recover from a full seven years later?  The first a storm.  The second, an imposition.<br />

<p> The work of planning at some point becomes the work of doing. </p> <p> Few communities move from planning to executing easily. This is especially notable in weak markets, though it occurs in strong markets too. In weak markets, planning does not typically require anyone to make a commitment. Or to put it more directly, it too seldom requires the community to really make choices. </p>

<p> Set aside whether or not you agree with anything Governor Romney has to say about anything.  Set aside whether or not you think it is axiomatic that the people of the United States need a federal agency generally charged with the mission of housing the poor and attending to urban issues.   </p> <p> Candidate Romney may be doing us a favor by putting HUD on the table for us as an American community to evaluate.  It does not matter if the world that favors the elimination of HUD is largely comprised of what Senator McCain called Tea Party Hobbits; the question as to the merit of keeping HUD or not deserves our attention. </p>

<p> At a recent meeting in Washington, DC I was astonished at the demonstrated lack of grasp of how neighborhood markets work. This, after all, was a meeting called by supposed experts in revitalization to discuss revitalization with other experts in revitalization. </p> <p> Notably missing during six hours of painful back and forth rehashing of Great Society pabulum v 5.0 was any sense of what &quot;demand&quot; means.  It&#39;s not just that there was a lack of understanding of demand, for three quarters of a day it was as if the very word - demand - was off limits.   </p>