Common Sense Lost Today

I won't go back in time. In this blog 5 days after Katrina hit I suggested that the best thing to do with the low places with empty ruined buildings in New Orleans rather than try to rebuild was bulldoze the whole thing, crush and landfill them. This is historically what people have done for centruies. Build on the ruins of former days. We have a landfill that is now a golf course near me. It works. It's less of an eyesore than the rat infestation that is now New Orleans.

Don't landfill a big mountain, just fill in the low places. New Orleans is lost anyway. It will never be what it was. Only wealthy folks are coming back. Heck they are even going to vote republican. Mayor Nagin is over.

So, once more, with gusto, bulldoze the whole works. Fill in the low spots, grow grass for a while then build on that in 20 years.

Here's a couple resources examples:

Chicago was expanded east into the lake after the Chicago Fire. Pretty much everything EAST of Michigan Ave is fill. Smart move. It needed to be raised.

From Comments to this Post:

It's amazing what they'll build cities on top of. Anything named Tel in the Mideast has probably got a mound of cities underneath it. A big thing in the western US is cities that raised their ground level, so you have everyone's old ground floor becoming the basement, as in "Underground Seattle" and even in my own town of Port Angeles. I know they raised Chicago a good 70' (20m) after the big fire in the 1870s. There are probably some pretty neat basements.

I think underground Atlanta is the same thing after Sherman leveled it. Why are we not doing what we should do in New Orleans and start over? Stupid Politics is why.

Otherwise we will have to do this:




HatTip to Barry Kolb