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Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 433-434



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A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. By Ari Kelman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xiii+283. $29.95.

Ari Kelman's book is an engaging environmental history heavy with legal overtones that detail the complex and ever changing relationship of New Orleans with the Mississippi River. It is a readable and well-written addition to the serious literature concerning the Crescent City and riverfront adaptation and redevelopment generally. A major theme, developed in five chapters, is the complex interplay of uses of the most valuable land in the city: the batture and the levee. The earliest settlers simply piled material on land abutting the river and considered it public. Over time the customs of western commerce forced a redefinition of the area as privately controlled space subject to rents and restrictions. The friction engendered by that change split the city into three separate municipalities (or wards) for almost a generation in the pre-Civil War era. After the war, the city reunited and annexed adjacent lands upriver, a process that ran through 1874 as the English model of land oversight and control replaced the earlier, more [End Page 433] informal arrangement. It might be a bit of stretch to attribute the breakup and reunion solely to the land controversy, as there were many underlying issues, but the story is told well at this level.

Later chapters address the levee controversy dealt with so deftly by John Barry in Rising Tide and the coming of first the railroad and then motorized vehicles to the riverfront abutting a densely packed blue-collar neighborhood that stretched the breadth of the port. In each instance, a battle occurred over the use of riverfront land and access thereto. Kelman tells the story of a fabulously misconceived project that would have cut the legendary French Quarter off from the river with a six-lane elevated expressway. This was vetoed by Transportation Secretary John Volpe in 1969, who realized that the project would be defeated in court and perhaps set a precedent that would jeopardize the entire urban interstate highway program. After that, the way was open for the city to address the redevelopment of the riverfront with a different view of the interrelationships involved.

In sum, A River and its City is of value to the reader interested in history, politics, or the environment. Of signal value are the early chapters on the land grab attempt by Edward Livingston and the rapacity of railroad corporations, aided and abetted by corrupt politicians. There is an extensive bibliography that is of equal value to the book itself.


Dr. Thayer if professor of urban planning and public administration at the University of New Orleans.
Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer.


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