As the most powerful hurricane the U.S. mainland has seen in more than a decade makes its way up the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, communities and policy makers may face tough decisions in rebuilding in areas hard-hit by Hurricane Matthew.
One Georgia State University professor has had a front seat view of long-term recovery after an earlier, but deadly and massive hurricane, that provides lessons learned for policy makers and communities today.
John Travis Marshall, assistant professor of law at Georgia State University’s College of Law, advised the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) from 2007 to 2011 as that city worked, and continues to work, on long-term recovery after Hurricane Katrina inflicted catastrophic loss of life and damage to the city in 2005.
NORA faced difficult choices about which neighborhoods to invest in to spur development that would blossom into greater neighborhood and community redevelopment.
As the 10th anniversary of the storm occurred last year, Marshall said in an article for Georgia State University’s news hub that such choices represent emotional issues as much as physical infrastructure issues.
For example, the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East suffered catastrophic damage. The areas are low-lying and can be prone to massive flooding if levees fail again. But in the end, the city decided to issue building permits without restrictions.
“It was too difficult to say, ‘you lost your mom and dad here in the flood, you lost your house, but we’re not going to allow you to come home,’” he said. “Without a thorough pre-disaster discussion about relocated families from severely storm- damaged neighborhoods, it may not have been realistic to think that the city could foreclose residents’ deep-seated wish to return.”
Marshall is the co-editor of a new book, How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality (Routledge, 2016). The book examines threats to communities from those challenges, and includes specific recommendations to cities to respond to these critical problems.
For more about Marshall, visit http://law.gsu.edu/profile/john-travis-marshall/.
To contact Marshall directly, email him at [email protected]. For further assistance in contacting him or for other faculty expertise from Georgia State University, please contact Jeremy Craig, Public Relations Coordinator, at [email protected] or 404-413-1374.
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