As debate continues over a recent study suggesting New Orleans may face an unavoidable future because of rising sea levels, Steve Cochran, Ned Randolph, Katy Reckdahl and Gus Bennett take a deeper look at the challenges and choices ahead. In Part 2, the conversation explores climate adaptation, coastal land loss, public policy, culture, and resilience, asking whether one of America's most distinctive cities can continue to adapt and endure in the face of a changing environment.
A measured response to the latest study suggesting New Orleanians should abandon the city due to the imminent threat of sea level rise. Public policy advocate Steve Cochran, journalist and author Ned Randolph, photojournalist Gus Bennett and Lens editor Katy Reckdahl discuss the story from The Guardian which has the town talking. Part 1 this week.
"Understand how the term relocation hits when you use it for those of us who have made lives here," writes 11th-generation New Orleanian Christopher Ard. "Maybe try 'abandon' or 'give up on.'"
Bernard Smith and Katy Reckdahl on the men trapped in the Orleans Parish Prison and Broad Street Bridge in the wake of the levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina that flooded New Orleans.
Inspired by the floodwaters after Katrina and the birth of his son, photographer Gus Bennett created a new photography series, Organic Watermarks. Some images include 18 different layers of post-storm textures.
The 2005 abandonment of incarcerated people within the flooded Orleans Parish jail complex became one of the catalysts to reform the city’s dysfunctional justice system
“There’s something full circle about our Katrina baby protecting swimmers in the Lower 9th Ward from deep water,” Lens editor Katy Reckdahl writes in an essay about the city and her son, who was born 23 hours before Katrina struck the city.
"Like the rest of the country, New Orleans is suspended in a state of anxious anticipation. This tourism-dependent city is tiptoeing into reopening, with neither a vaccine nor widespread testing. It’s a dilemma facing every municipality, but in a city whose identity, culture and economy are fueled by human interactions, the issue seems particularly fraught here." Martin Pedersen interviews author and former Lens editor Jed Horne about the tough times ahead.
The disaster narrative that national observers are habituated to look for has blinded them to a lot of what’s going on in our schools ...
Most white people say the recovery is going well. Most black people believe the opposite.
