The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans

8. Laboratorization and the “Green” Rebuilding of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward

· 225 ·· CHAPTER 8 · Laboratorization and the “Green” Rebuilding of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward Barbara L. Allen In the days and months following the flooding from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August 2005, no neighborhood received more coverage than the destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward. After the storm, the floodwall separating the neighborhood from a navigable industrial canal ruptured, releasing a torrent of water, literally washing away an entire section of the city, and taking many lives in its wake. Whereas houses closest to the floodwalls were literally erased, uprooted from their foundation , and carried away, other parts of the Lower Ninth Ward (L9) were left damaged but intact to varying degrees. Dramatic press coverage, YouTube videos, and blogs were only the beginning of the public engagement storm that was to follow Katrina and be centered, in part, in the L9. In the wake of the very visible government failure, at all levels, to help citizens in the days and months (and years) following the disaster, a phenomenal number of nongovernmental organizations, Katrina-oriented philanthropy groups, and civic and church volunteers filled the assistance void left by the government and for-profit sector. Almost overnight, New Orleans became a full-scale neoliberal experiment in recovery and rebuilding. Everything from debris removal contractors and temporary housing to public education and the health service was part of this agenda, shifting via government contract what were formerly public provisions to private enterprises.1 The void left in the formerly public services sphere combined with the dramatic needs of the residents formed a perfect storm allowing these grand neoliberal experiments to occur, largely, but not entirely, without protest from the distressed public. Not that other urban areas have not been touched by funding and policy changes effectively shifting formerly public goods and 226 BARBARA L. ALLEN services to the private arena, but what made New Orleans unique in this regard was the scale, speed, and ease of the transformation. My research examines a significant technological transformation in one flood-damaged neighborhood. This transformation was in large part due to the neoliberal trends, made evident in built form, in the city after Katrina. To examine this green transformation phenomenon, I use strategies from the interdisciplinary field of “science and technology in society,” sometimes called “science and technology studies” (STS), as it provides some useful tools for understanding social, technological, and infrastructural changes. For my analysis in this chapter, I use several STS analytical frameworks; the primary one is a version of “laboratory studies” as developed by French STS theorist Bruno Latour. His version of laboratory studies is an applied methodological approach to track emerging technoscience innovation and transfer on-the-ground. It is demonstrative of the application of another broader theoretical and methodological approach that was developed in part by Latour—actor-network theory (ANT), as expanded on later in this chapter.2 A Neighborhood in Danger of Erasure The Lower Ninth Ward (L9), magnified by the media, epitomized both the immense destruction of the storm and the racial inequalities embedded therein. While many help groups flooded into all parts of the city, there seemed a particularly intense focus on the L9. The density of outside groups and volunteers was easily visible to the naked eye: groups of college students in matching t-shirts busy at work in abandoned homes, church groups in marked buses lining the streets, and young, predominantly white volunteers typically outnumbering locals in neighborhood meetings. The initial focus of outside groups in the city was primarily gutting and cleaning homes and providing temporary assistance. The second wave of volunteers would be involved with permanent rebuilding , and those groups required a different focus. Since the obvious tasks, such as gutting and cleaning, were done, the new set of tasks in rebuilding required making some assumptions about what was to be rebuilt and the best way to go about doing it. It is probably no surprise that the first city-wide rebuilding plan completed for then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s “Bring New Orleans Back Commission” was done by the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The ULI’s website describes LABORATORIZATION AND THE “GREEN” REBUILDING OF NEW ORLEANS 227 it as a nonprofit organization “connecting the global real estate community ” and “representing the entire spectrum of land use and real estate development disciplines, working in private enterprise and public service.”3 The notorious plan, dubbed “the green dot plan” by...