REVIEW "My Storm: Managing the Recovery of New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina" by Edward J Blakely

Posted on February 12, 2012 by RODNEY

My Storm: Managing the Recovery of New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina by Edward J Blakely 2011, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 978-0-8122-4385-7

My Storm is a book which every aspiring urban planner should read. It is an account of Dr Ed Blakely's management of a disaster recovery program for New Orleans over a period of two years ending in 2009. The story is largely based on the diary he kept of unfolding machinations encountered along the way. It makes compelling reading and is written much more like a journalist than an academic. That if anything, is its main criticism. It is highly personal and at times annoyingly so. Written in the first person, I got the sense that sometimes the things were being held back with numerous titbits, and not enough meat at times. The most intriguing example of this was his relationship with Donna Addkison chief of development. The two obviously never got on from the word go – that much is obvious – but we never really get to understand why. Nevertheless this was just one of many head to head encounters he had to deal with in trying to penetrate an inward looking organisation and an obstructively unhelpful staff, resistant to outside influence or reform.

There are many big revelations which run contrary to conventional wisdom. For example we are told New Orleans was well on the way down economically, long before Katrina struck. The pervasive images of jazz afficionados and happy bars pre-Katrina mask acute poverty and social imbalance of the predominantly black population. The geographic and climate changing effects of weather and rising sea levels make New Orleans an impossible place to protect from similar future events. Ed quotes an authority from the School of Earth and Atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech, Judith Curry stating that in 100 years: "there's no way there's going to be a city here this is just the way geology and climate work ". It's an extraordinary revelation coming almost two thirds through the book. It makes the vast sums spent on capital works such as levee banks – works which Ed suggests are more likely to accentuate future flooding than hold it back – completely bizarre. It obviously raises the question, not satisfactorily answered, why New Orleans post-Katrina was not re-sited elsewhere, rather than rebuilt in the same unsustainable location.

As an urban planner myself I found Ed's account of his approach to urban regeneration and repair particularly interesting because it uses multiple dimensions to achieve particular outcomes. Issues such as economic viability, social harmony, cultural enrichment, and signature buildings combined with a modus operandi of outsourcing project management and proactively capturing viable commercial and industrial development are unusual and refreshing. In the case of New Orleans, the overlay of politics, racial conflict and bureaucratic obstruction obviously have made his job an immense challenge. But there is a high degree of pragmatism and altruism in his approach. From the beginning he never sees his mission as other than short-term one, and is sensible enough to pass the work on to others having set the wheels in motion.

But this book is not simply one written for urban planners or other professions involved in development. It has a much broader interest for those interested in public administration, and the realities of contemporary America so different from what we might be led to believe from watching television. The stark reality of a climate change future and the lack of preparedness for dealing with it by government at all its levels is extraordinary. It is the more extraordinary from the world's leading economy with its unmatched development of cultural achievements, educational institutions, and computer systems. Somehow, it seems, disadvantaged cities like New Orleans are relegated to the too hard basket. My Storm really whetted my appetite to understand more of why that should be so. Five stars.

Rodney Jensen