The hood is well-paved with good intentions.

As I keep my blog on life support while I remain in the Afghan theater, I hope—more or less—to alternate posts with observations on life here behind the wire with more of my conventional posts, featuring photos taken from this past summer and earlier. Today’s post has been surprisingly difficult for which to gather information, intensified by the fact that I have no other outlet while at a base in Afghanistan. But I’m now prepared to show one of the most potent examples used today of a means for individual districts in urbanized areas to assert some level of self-governance.

Metropolitan America today comprises such a patchwork of neighborhood association—many of which duplicate the functions of municipal government—that it’s hard to believe that these now ubiquitous civic groups were relatively uncommon just forty years ago. In his article “Revolution or Evolution?” from the quarterly journal Regulation (also available under the title “The Rise of Private Neighborhood Associations: Revolution or Evolution?” in the book The Property Tax, Land Use, and Land Use Regulation edited by Dick Netzer), William A. Fischel wrote that private associations as we know them today originated in the condominium boom of the 1970s, principally to pool community resources in the governance of shared space, but their subsequent proliferation embraced communities of single-family houses, while their overall supervisory scope ballooned as well. In some communities, they have served simply as a means of consolidating the sentiments of the residents of a neighborhood in response to any changes implemented in municipal government services, or—more often than not—changes in zoning and land use. Elsewhere, neighborhood associations have assumed a broad array of duties under the political aegis of common area maintenance, and in the process they have accrued an incredible amount of power. Many neighborhood associations already perform functions that have traditionally fallen under the responsibility of municipal government: as Fischel points out, “They collect garbage and remove snow; they provide local infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, and sewers; they regulate land-use and occupancy; and they provide collective services such as recreation and sometimes even health-maintenance for their residents.” Some cities, as Fischel observes, even contract with the neighborhood association so that the latter can provide those services through the association's revenues, while the City then provides members a break on their local taxes.

Perhaps most significantly for the focus of this article, these associations of homeowners have emerged in neighborhoods that predate the very political concept, sometimes by more than a century. They offer a means of protecting the interests, and, most saliently, the property values, of the individuals who live or own real estate within a specific association's boundaries. Several months ago I wrote a two-part article called “There Goes the Neighborhood”, focusing upon the maturely established Garden District Civic Association in Baton Rouge and the semantic differences between the more traditional term “neighborhood” and the more contemporary “subdivision”. The bottom-up level of control (dare I call it “grassroots”?) that this Baton Rouge association has been able to wield through the consolidation of three smaller historic districts has, to a certain degree, shielded it from the disinvestment and visible economic decay that some of the other neighborhoods around it have suffered. Today, Baton Rouge's Garden District stands as the most affluent old neighborhood in the metropolitan area—a sharp contrast from the broadly upper middle class “subdivisions” on the city's outskirts.

The “Garden District” name in Baton Rouge owes a great deal to its larger, splashier city 80 miles to the southeast, New Orleans, whose own Garden District remains one of the preeminent collections of southern mansions, many of them antebellum, in the country. It is a celebrated tourist attraction in a city that has more than its share of curiosities for the outsider. Needless to say, it has a powerful vehicle for organizing and prioritizing the interests of its residents in the Garden District Association. New Orleans' Garden District Association epitomizes Fischel's example of a neighborhood association broadly assuming duties prescribed to municipal governments: it has drafted its own zoning guidelines, it helped to confer authority to the Historic District Landmarks Commission for all development changes, and it monitors the area within its boundaries through the Garden District Security Patrol. Essentially, it mitigates some of the onus to the City of New Orleans in providing services to the area, and it funds these services exclusively through the dues of its residents. Fischel notes, however, that no city has completely surrendered its responsibilities to a neighborhood association. They can't. City cops still retain law enforcement authority over neighborhood security patrols; mayors and city councils could not contract away law enforcement or zoning/land-use control to a neighborhood association, even if they wanted to.

But particularly powerful neighborhood associations have found a means of achieving a remarkable degree of control over how their jurisdiction looks and operates, regardless of the fact that, as political entities, they lack any police power over the city. Fischel argues that, rather than diluting the power of municipal land use decisions, they have refined or even intensified it. Another neighborhood just two miles away from the Garden District in New Orleans demonstrates the potentially complex interplay between a city and its neighborhood association.

Broadmoor anchors itself at the intersection of two of Uptown New Orleans' most prominent streets: Claiborne Avenue and Napoleon Avenue, where the above photograph was taken. Most of its housing dates from between the turn of the 20^th century and World War II, at a point when civil engineering technology allowed the draining of the swampy lands of this part of town to make it habitable. By Broadmoorians' own admittances, the area sits at “the bottom of the bowl”: all of it rests below sea level, far removed from the natural levees created over time by the depositing of silt along the banks of the Mississippi. (The oldest and most famous New Orleans neighborhoods, such as the Garden District and French Quarter, sit right along the Mississippi, much more safely above sea level.) Despite some venerable, palatial homes along Napoleon Avenue, the Broadmoor area has never attracted tourism. A 2007 New York Times article observed that Broadmoor's greatest curiosity is that its racial demographics in recent decades have largely reflected that of the city as a whole: not quite 70% African American, approximately 25% white, and a smattering of Asians and non-white Hispanics. The variety of housing types has resulted in an economically diverse neighborhood as well, from working class to upper-income levels, in which about half of the population owns its own home, a figure on par with the city as a whole.

No doubt to its own residents, the area seemed palpably hopeless after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2006: Broadmoor was doused by the flooding after the storm, with most of the housing suffering inundation from 5 to 10 feet above their foundations. Then-Mayor Ray Nagin's announcement at the end of 2006 from the results of his Bring Back New Orleans Commission surely aggravated feelings of impotence. The Commission advised that the flooding was so severe and the land so far below sea level that the area should revert to permanent parkland, represented among several sites in the city through green dots. The report recommended bulldozing the homes where green dots rested on the map.

The announcement—notorious to some members of the community as “The Green Dot Report”—helped mobilize the officers of the Broadmoor Improvement Association (BIA). Days later, the Association organized a rally for the neighborhood, many of whose members were still displaced and scattered across the country. Mayor Nagin learned how unpopular it was for a council of outsiders to dismiss broad swaths of the city without local input; he promptly tossed the report and dissolved the Commission. The BIA, under the leadership of president LaToya Cantrell, realized it could use its institutional presence to consolidate the voices of its diverse members and help draw greater attention to the neighborhood's profound needs.

The outside stimulus of those green dots surely stirred the residents of flood-ravaged Broadmoor into collective mobilization. It didn't hurt that the area was the childhood home of the Landrieus, an influential political dynasty that includes a popular former mayor (Maurice “Moon”), a US Senator (Mary), and the recently elected current mayor (Mitch). Or that Walter Isaacson, biographer, former editor of Time magazine, and Clinton/Obama appointee, also grew up in the area. But the fact remains that the Broadmoor Improvement Association accomplished an incredible amount in the ensuing two years after the storm. Anyone who lived in New Orleans at the time would recognize the “Broadmoor Lives” banners attached to every light post along the neighborhood's most prominent streets, all colored green as a clear ironic inversion of those condemnatory dots. And in a matter of months, the BIA secured assistance from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on devising a rebuilding plan; to this day, it receives interns from both the Kennedy School and Harvard's Graduate School of Design each year. As the aforementioned New York Times article indicates (one of several national media outlets to feature the organization), the BIA secured $5 million in pledges from the Clinton Global Initiative. It increased the size of its boundaries listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It received a $2 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation to rebuild its local branch of the library. And, of course, it shepherded the gutting and restoring of the many badly damaged homes, resulting in a return rate that far surpassed that of areas equally damaged. It may seem trite to suggest that the BIA's influence helped endow its former residents with a renewed faith in the cohesiveness of the community after the disaster, but the high profile Broadmoor has been able to achieve since Katrina has made it the envy of other neighborhood associations in New Orleans and across the country. Clearly they have gotten something right.

Press attention on Broadmoor has slowed in recent years, but that does not mean that the BIA has suffered any dilution in influence. The red lines on the map below shows what the BIA considers the boundaries of Broadmoor as they fall under its jurisdiction:

It's quite a large neighborhood, and an observation of the declared boundary of an adjacent neighborhood association suggests that those boundaries may be under some dispute. But if BIA's jurisdiction—and, consequently, the neighborhood of Broadmoor—has grown since Katrina, its influence and efficacy has made it hard for residents in the “disputed territory” to voice many complaints. Some of the most recent changes to the area suggest that its ability to attract outside investment continues unabated.

The sign announcing the entrance to the neighborhood has sat there for years. The tree plantings are obviously new; so is the sidewalk. This pedestrian trail runs in the expansive median (or “neutral ground” as New Orleanians would call it) on Napoleon Avenue. The sidewalk and the plantings begin at this intersection and continue northward to Napoleon Avenue's terminus, where it diverges to form Fontainebleau Drive and South Broad Avenue (incorrectly labeled Broad Street on Google Maps). The picture below, looking northward on Napoleon Avenue, better demonstrates the expansiveness of this improvement.

The trail lasts about one mile. But Napoleon Avenue extends at least another mile south of Claiborne Avenue, to its terminus just beyond Tchoupitoulas Street at the Mississippi River. Here's the view down the other portion of Napoleon Avenue, in two photos. First is the “hub” where these two major streets and their medians meet with a square of shared neutral ground:

Clearly those proud, mature palm trees are newly planted. But continue south on Napoleon Avenue, on the other side of Claiborne from Broadmoor:

No improvements, nor any evidence that improvements are planned. While it is possible that the other portion of Napoleon will benefit from this investment at a later phase, a nearby sign that reveals the identity of the investor suggests otherwise:

This is hardly a project funded by the City of New Orleans, nor is it one paid for by neighborhood association's annual dues. This is ostensibly part of a larger civil engineering and “site restoration” initiative supported by the US Army Corps of Engineers, an agency famous in New Orleans for its responsibility in constructing and maintaining the complex system of levees and canals. Needless to say, after the multiple breaches in the levees resulted in the flooding of the city after Hurricane Katrina, it is not a terribly popular agency in New Orleans. While I hardly have the knowledge of the topographic and drainage issues to determine if this site restoration was fully warranted, it cannot help but also tacitly involve a certain degree of currying favor in order to restore trust among New Orleanians in the USACE's ability to protect the city from flooding.

But check the boundaries of the project on that sign. The improvements—using an impervious paving surface, I might add—will only involve certain stretches of Napoleon and Claiborne Avenue. I have outlined in green those segments according to the description on the sign:

They fit within the BIA's boundaries like a hand in glove. I hate to engage in armchair conspiracy theorizing, and it is unfair to assume there is a malicious or ulterior motive behind the targeting of improvements in a particular neighborhood. After all, these stretches of Napoleon/Claiborne and Broadmoor itself are “the bottom of the bowl”—some of the lowest points in a city already overwhelmingly sitting below sea level.

But if this does demonstrate an example of a municipal sub-unit receiving favorable treatment from an agency larger than the city or even the state, it won't be the first time. Earlier I referenced the grant that BIA received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in order to repair flood damage to the Keller Library, the Broadmoor neighborhood's closest branch. It was a wonderful achievement that testifies to the tenacity of the BIA in seeking solutions to community problems. But BIA does not own the Keller Library, or any library branches; the New Orleans Public Library system under the City of New Orleans does. The resulting contretemps suggests that the Broadmoor Improvement Association has sought to address community problems by bypassing the City, definitely in the library scenario, and quite possibly here as well, regarding the community's desire for a more attractively landscaped, pedestrian friendly neutral ground.

Without casting stones at either party, I can recognize that the BIA saw both a certain level of bureaucratic inertia in the City's ability to work with FEMA Public Assistance (PA) in kick-starting recovery projects, as well as an exogenous solution that it was perfectly willing to take into its own hands, by pursuing a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The neighborhood association figured that it could secure the money and then sort out the responsibility of implementation later, a decision that may have proven wise in expediting the recovery process. And even if the City was never going to have to fund the restoration of this library due to FEMA money (nor would it fund most levee-related improvements that the Army Corps have a federal mandate to address), the City's leadership to a certain degree was relieved of an administrative burden of managing the requisite paperwork to procure FEMA's Public Assistance funding, which, under FEMA PA stipulations would only return the facility to its previous, pre-Katrina condition. BIA's goal was to get the Keller Library back functioning better than before; with this generous grant, they can most likely succeed, provided they reach necessary consensus with the board at New Orleans Public Library.

Neighborhood associations contribute a sheen that inadvertently amplifies the potency of land use regulation. The significantly smaller geographic boundaries, the lack of any true police power that requires the added administration of enforcement (that burden still falls on the City), and, as Fischel recognizes, the ability to appeal to homeowners' concerns about preserving value in what is most likely their single greatest financial asset—all of these help allow neighborhood associations to refine land use decisions within their jurisdiction. As is the case with the Broadmoor Improvement Association, they may prove disproportionately powerful if they can mobilize their residents to attend Planning Commission meetings they otherwise would shrug aside, or to even develop their own series of plans which they impress upon the city to codify.

Three generations ago, the predecessors of the contemporary neighborhood associations assumed a much less benign role than anything documented here. Fischel is one among many to recognize that the earliest zoning and land use regulations helped enforce racial segregation, as did neighborhood covenants. Well after the Supreme Court struck down racial zoning and segregationist covenants, communities used associations to protect the investments of their homes, usually from racial minority families moving in—a home-grown attempt at redlining. In his book The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Thomas Sugrue observes how well over a hundred precursors to the modern neighborhood association arose in Detroit, uniting people of various national origins (Italian, Irish, Polish, German) through their shared whiteness and goal of keeping Negroes out. Their organizations scarcely differed semantically from the NAs of today; many were called “civic associations”, “homeowners' associations”, “protective associations”, or “improvement associations” (pp. 211-12). Civil rights legislation by the mid 1960s theoretically quashed such trans-ethnic alliances, and the modern neighborhood association could scarcely get away with such overt articulation of racially discriminatory goals.

The BIA, with its racially diverse membership in a reasonably integrated neighborhood milieu, has ambitions that are captured in its title just as well as coming from an admiring New York Times journalist. No doubt other associations serving a less diverse population cannot claim such ecumenical goals. Fischel and others recall how smaller municipalities have in the past used zoning to block the construction of low-income housing within their jurisdictions; Mount Laurel, New Jersey offers the most famous example of this. Conversely, modern neighborhood and homeowners' associations have deterred newcomers through draconian standards regulating a home's exterior appearance, through prohibitively expensive annual dues, or through restrictions prohibiting owners from taking on tenants or converting part or all of a property to a rental unit. They also depend on a certain level of coercion for those who refuse to join, regardless of whether or not they agree with the perceived majority's vision for the neighborhood. None of these are necessarily racially motivated initiatives (though some isolated instances clearly are), but they echo the Mount Laurel goal of preserving home values through a certain level of homogeneity, most likely socioeconomically derived. Fischel recognizes that homeownership is a double-edged sword: it can induce aggressive territorialism but it “induces people to pay attention to the quality of life in their communities”, such as school improvements even if they don't have kids. It may motivate the residents of Broadmoor to fix a City library that sits on their turf, even if they won't ever pick up a book there, and it encourages them to advocate for sidewalks on the neutral ground, even if both sides of the street have them at the curb and they do not walk anywhere regardless.

The larger predicament arises when a neighborhood association's vision encroaches on the authority of the City, even if it does not impede on the rights of other associations. I anticipate that this potentiality for the subversion of a City's authority—even if it derives from legitimate grievances against the City's ineffectualness—will result in a declarative Supreme Court decision within my lifetime. In New Orleans, the BIA recently announced that a State Senator is seeking legislation for a formal recognition of the Broadmoor Neighborhood Improvement District. Fischel believes that neighborhood associations' embedded covenants and rules have generally complemented zoning to articulate further public demand for land use regulation, even though he suspects that the influence of zoning is in retreat. But the interplay between the two can result in disharmony when a neighborhood association essentially seeks exogenous contractors to do work for which the city is ultimately responsible, and I believe we have yet to see the residual effects of this power struggle. Neighborhood associations use their respective cities' inkwells, but they can gesture with a much sharper quill.

MONTAGE: Animal and vegetable deserve a break today.

A spike in the workload has again slowed down much of my blogging progress (as well as an apparent server problem with Blogger and Google on Monday night), but I still have acres of fertile fields ahead of me left to sew, so even if the monthly output lags, I have every intention of committing myself to the new material. In the meantime, it has been awhile since I’ve added a real photo montage—I didn’t get one in last month—so the blog is due for one, especially since this entry features a topic that I’ve otherwise exhausted: handicapped access in urban settings. I don’t have much new to say, but this particular design predicament and its ensuing solution are interesting enough to merit a discussion. Thus, I will provide minimal “captions” to the photos below, taken close to my current home, from a McDonald’s near downtown Biloxi, Mississippi:


My apologies if some of the photos approve misty; my lens was apparently clouded over on a predictably humid morning. At any rate, the McDonald’s here on Beach Boulevard (US Highway 90) uses a sort of sandstone motif that seems to be a particularly popular design vernacular these days, giving clear indication that the structure post-dates Hurricane Katrina.


If that weren’t proof enough, the fact that it sits just a few hundred feet from the water should offer evidence to anyone familiar with the area that this is a new building. In Biloxi, virtually everything within a tenth of a mile of the shore was obliterated by Katrina’s storm surge. Just across US 90 from this McDonald’s is the completely refurbished Hard Rock Casino Hotel, and just beyond that is the Mississippi Sound.


For a historically spread-out city that is redeveloping after the hurricane with abundant parking, this McDonald’s squeezes its thirty spaces into a relatively small parcel, as outlined in red below.


Thanks to a huge hotel just across the street (and the even more colossal Beau Rivage just next door to the west), this stretch of Highway 90 enjoys a high enough density of visitors that the McDonald’s across the street could very well expect some foot traffic, even in an area in which the building configurations otherwise do not attempt to accommodate pedestrians. As the photos indicate, the McDonald’s is also elevated several feet above street level.

The ramp out front demonstrates a clear effort to provide wheelchair access. It runs from the sidewalk at the intersection—


—up to the parking lot.


Yet, interestingly, the sidewalk parallel to the city street does not offer this same convenience.

Pedestrians walking along Main Street toward downtown Biloxi will have to climb a few stairs, and then descend again after several feet.

The last two photos capture the bizarre site preparation decisions that the developers made here, presumably in negotiation with the City in order to obtain the building permit. This parcel incorporates three different grades: one at the level of the street and most of the sidewalk; one for the terrace hosting two expansive live oak trees and the elevated portion of the sidewalk; and one for the McDonald’s building itself. The decision behind elevating the McDonald’s is obvious: regardless of whether this complies with FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program’s Base Flood Elevation standards, any sensible franchiser working with this parcel would want to elevate to reduce the chances of flooding in the event of another storm surge. But it would appear that the original elevation decision took place long ago, at the grade where the two live oak trees stand, both which clearly pre-date Hurricane Katrina, and thus survived its powerful winds. The earth around those trees needs to remain elevated to accommodate their expansive root systems; bringing the sidewalk down to street level at this point could have threatened their stability.

The question is how much the local ordinances dictated this unusual decision. If the City of Biloxi has both a sidewalk ordinance (which it apparently does—Section 23-14-7 in the Land Development Ordinance) and a tree protection ordinance (Section 23-16-11) this parcel would pose a difficult means of reconciling the two codes. It’s highly possible that the sidewalk predates the new McDonald’s as well as Hurricane Katrina, though, judging from the pavement’s new appearance, chances are that some entity installed new concrete to coincide with the construction taking place. If Biloxi’s sidewalk ordinance mandates that all new construction requires a sidewalk at any perimeter that directly abuts the streets, then the developer installed this segment by law. But how did he or she circumvent the Americans with Disabilities Act by building a portion of sidewalk that is clearly non-compliant? The two live oaks at a different grade quite possibly form the crux of an elaborate negotiation. Also, a wheelchair can avoid the stairs on the sidewalk with little difficulty: first by running up the ramp into the McDonald’s parking lot, then by circumscribing the building along the parking lot, and finally by taking the automobile exit ramp back around to the back of the structure, on the other side of the stairs to the sidewalk (to the left of the above photos). A seemingly mundane development that could take place anywhere manifests the collision of different well-intentioned policies, with results that accommodate the interests of both groups: those in wheelchairs and those seeking to save native tree growth. Though one could argue that both the trees’ root network and disabled persons are moderately inconvenienced by the resulting site plan, no one emerges a loser, demonstrating the potential for ingenuity in compromise.

MONTAGE: Suburban tumbleweeds.

As the month’s end approaches, I’m due for another photo-centric blog post, and this time I have to reveal to my viewing community a particularly charming incarnation from the housing bust that shares an inextricable link to the economic downturn. Or perhaps not. This development, in Tangipahoa Parish, 60 miles to the northwest of New Orleans, seems to predate the collapse of Lehman Brothers, among other things:


Much to my surprise, I was able to find out a bit about the proposed “Coves of the Highland” subdivision: it was part of a Community Development District under the same name, and the State Bond Commission approved $7.7 million to the District in the fall of 2006 for infrastructure and waterworks improvements, with the apparent goal of stimulating economic growth in an area moderately affected by Hurricane Katrina, through the creation of new construction jobs. In 2008, an audit of basic financial statements revealed no major reportable conditions, and the only issue of noncompliance was the District’s failure to adopt a budget on or before the first day of the fiscal year (January 1 of 2006, 2007, and 2008). And as of 2009, Coves of the Highland CDD is a plaintiff in a suit brought against the New Orleans law firm MgGlintchey Stafford, PLLC.

I’m hardly a good enough detective to connect the dots and figure out what happened with this limited information, but I have just enough sense to bring a camera with me everywhere I go, so I was able to document the progress—or lack thereof—of this large subdivision on a sparsely populated stretch of State Highway 445.


Judging from the wall of forest that surrounds site on three sides, the project involved the extensive clearance of trees. A subdivision with such sweeping tree removal most likely never targeted a high-end or luxury clientele; if it did, the developer may have opted for selective tree removal—most likely at a higher cost than widespread clearance—in order to retain a tree canopy, passing the price down to homebuyers in the form of costlier lots.

But this isn’t merely a cleared plot of land with groomed road beds. What is amazing about this development is how far along it advanced before it choked.


The streets have curbs, and the green box ensconced among the tall grass indicates the installation of buried power lines.

The developer also installed street lamps at regular intervals. In the background against the trees one can see little white flecks: more lamps.

They’re everywhere—fully installed throughout the neighborhood.

Scarcely visible in the center of the above photos is a trace of red—a hydrant. No doubt the developer installed water lines as well.

A development that is advanced enough to include curbs will inevitably also have storm sewers.


Near one of the entrances, the road diverges into what was probably intended to be a landscaped island on this triangular patch.

Just fifty feet further, the two divergent roads wrap around a pond, most likely intended to serve dual roles of decoration and water retention.

Perhaps the most interesting elements of these settlements-without-people are the traces of human presence, despite the absence of any real habitability to the development. Usually the human footprint comes in the form of illicit activity. Clearly the site has caught on as a dumping ground, though it is unclear how many parties are responsible for it.

All it takes, though, is one pioneer—an individual bold enough to appropriate these privately owned lands by engaging in conduct that would range from undesirable to unthinkable on property that the same individual owns. Someone decided to use one of the dead-end streets at the back of this featured property to burn something down to ashes.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that a lift station in the background?


By now the Broken Windows Theory is generally broadly known: let an environment fall into neglect, and people will take advantage of the lack of maintenance by exacerbating the damage. Leave a home abandoned for too long and it will naturally age, but once someone breaks a single window and it stays unmaintained, the remainder will soon suffer the same fate. Essentially, passers-by can capitalize on the absence of any real stewardship. Our gut reaction is to associate the Broken Windows Theory with urban settings, such New York City’s precipitous drop in crime after Mayor Giuliani integrated it with his policing strategy by identifying and maintaining problem properties.


I suppose it’s possible that this light pole leans at an angle because of natural forces: subsidence perhaps, or a tornado, or most likely hurricane-force winds from Gustav (Katrina pre-dates the groundbreaking of this subdivision). But a car could just as easily have rammed into the base, and someone may have thrown rocks at the light at the top. The fact that the majority of lights in the subdivision are intact provides no extra clue of the identity of the damaging agent: a natural disaster could be just as fickle and selective as a human being. But all it took was that first individual to flag the property as abandoned, and the evidence of abandonment—and subsequent vandalism—is easy to identify.

Natural forces are the obvious instigator when the decay of synthetic materials and reclamation of flora occur simultaneously. Nothing reaffirms the abiotic nature of concrete like a flaw—a gap in the perviousness.


Presumably this patch of the road had just as plainly visible of a curb as the rest of it, but drifts of soil have overtaken it, sometimes thick enough to sustain plant life.


And I’m not sure what this was trying to be.

I’d guess it was most likely a storm sewer based on its position along the curb, but it seems to lack anything deep enough to be considered a conduit for the water.

So what caused The Coves of the Highland to tank? Its location offers a clue:


The purple star approximates the site. If that looks like the middle of nowhere, well, that’s a reasonable guess. But this is America; that has never stopped anyone. The fact remains that it falls in the radar of the outer-outer reaches of suburban New Orleans. Two other communities nearby are fairly developed and offer a significant number of services. I have traced the general urbanized area for these communities in red. The red region to the west, consisting of Hammond and the smaller town of Pontchatoula, conveniently sits at the juncture of Interstates 12 and 15. Hammond (pop. 17,000) is the county seat; it is also the home of Southeastern Louisiana University, a regional mall, and an enviably healthy downtown which has surpassed the mall in popularity in recent years. Ponchatoula (pop. 5,000) boasts an award-winning Main Street and is best known in the region for its annual Strawberry Festival. Hammond is considered the principal municipality of the Hammond Micropolitan Statistical Area, making it the economic center of Tangipahoa Parish, though I suspect commuting patterns will place the parish in the New Orleans Metropolitan Area by the 2010 Census. Meanwhile, the urbanized area to the east, consisting of Covington and Mandeville, are among the wealthiest municipalities in the state—indisputable bedroom communities of New Orleans for scores of commuters who take the great Causeway bridge across Lake Pontchartrain. Covington, the parish seat, also has a vibrant downtown expected of a premier suburb. The sleepier Mandeville, hugging the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, has less of a distinct downtown but claimed a median family income of over $70,000 in 2000. The St. Tammany Parish school district consistently ranks among the top in the state.

Despite significant damage from Hurricane Katrina due to high winds (and storm surge in Mandeville), all four municipalities played pivotal roles in the Katrina diaspora. By many measurements, the catastrophic storm merely catalyzed an ongoing out-migration to these generally attractive communities. In fact, prior to the economic plunge of 2008, St. Tammany and Tangipahoa Parish had turned into a bit of a new Wild West for speculative middle and high-end developments. As commenters on this stalled St. Tammany development announcement have observed, the region is littered with subdivisions that failed to ignite.

The Coves of the Highland is hardly unique. But its location may prove a stumbling block to its eventual revival. It may be conveniently close to Covington and Hammond, but 10 to 15 miles to either town may not be near enough—and most of those other proposed subdivisions sit in a belt closer to Lake Pontchartrain, between Ponchatoula and Mandeville. The land value is higher in this belt, not only because of its proximity to the lake but also to New Orleans. I mentioned earlier that Coves of the Highland does not appear to be luxury—the cheaper real estate north of I-12 would certainly inhibit its chances of targeting a high-income crowd. And all of the evidence I introduced at the beginning of this blog post about it being part of Community Development District suggests that it received significant public subsidies.

Coves will most likely find a developer to complete the process; Tangiaphoa Parish and the State Bond Commission have expended too much political capital through taxpayer-supported bonds to let the site languish forever. And someday, the continued development pressures will make it an optimal location. But it’s not there right now, and it wasn’t optimal before the housing bust. Forget what they say in Field of Dreams: they just don’t always come when you build it. Just ask the instigators of the New Homestead Act. Federal legislators are trying to impel people to move back to the rapidly depopulating Great Plains of central and western Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas through all kinds of financial incentives. It wasn’t particularly successful the first time around, when the land was essentially given away—only about 40% earned their deeds from the federal government—so who’s to say it will work this time? And if it isn’t working just a few miles away from successful nascent bedroom communities of New Orleans (not to mention the equidistant Baton Rouge), when will Coves of the Highland succeed? The buyer will clearly have to implement significant repairs to the damaged infrastructure, but the same shared human values that make it a neglected dumping site now are sufficiently unpredictable to transform it in the future into a successful development, as well as a contributor to a practice at which Americans have long excelled: decentralizing.

Stairways as an unanswered question.

Urban infill at its essence tends to be one of the less controversial methods of revitalization. I say “at its essence” because the act of replacing vacant land with occupied developments may still arouse concern about compatibility with existing architectural character, depletion of green space, ability of existing infrastructure to support it, and the potential to encourage such far-reaching gentrification that original residents are forced out from escalating housing prices. But urban infill at its purest form replaces nothing with something, promoting economic efficiency when less land is necessary for provision of basic services than in low-density settlements. City leaders also appreciate infill because residential and commercial infill can only help to boost the tax base and increase revenue, and it suggests a renewed interest in land that may have been vacant for years prior, simply because of lack of demand in developing it.

In Indianapolis, the most prominent example of a widespread urban infill project is Fall Creek Place on the Near Northside, in which, within the past decade, the City of Indianapolis used a HUD grant to transform an economically devastated, almost completely vacated neighborhood (once nicknamed “Dodge City” for its notorious crime rate) by filling it with residences, largely echoing the existing urban character of that portion of the city. Locally and nationally regarded as a successful urban revitalization initiative, Fall Creek Place did not arouse considerable remonstrances of gentrification because so much of the neighborhood consisted of vacant lots (demolished homes) and abandoned structures prior to the initiative. Though the end result has gentrified the area, the project was effectively couched in language of urban infill because it so carefully avoided and attempted to minimize the displacement sometimes associated with gentrification.

The focus of this posting, however, is not on Fall Creek Place—I will reserve that for another essay. Just south of Fall Creek Place is another neighborhood experiencing an economic recovery—a gentrification, if you will, though it is largely taking place pointillistically and organically, through individuals investing in old homes, without a City-sponsored revitalization initiative. Formerly a fashionable residential retreat at the turn of the 19^th century, Herron-Morton Place suffered extensive disinvestment as long ago as the Depression, first due to upper middle class flight, so that many of the Victorian and Tutor Revivals could no longer sell and owners had to subdivide them into rentals. As the neighborhood continued to struggle in the 1950s, many homes were abandoned and suffered the wrecking ball; only in 1986 was the area listed on the National Register of Historic Places, at a time when few of the remaining homes were in good repair and many were boarded up. Herron-Morton has revitalized reasonably well since then: over half of the homes have been restored in loving detail, with attractive landscaping carefully painted trim. By most measurements, however, it has a long way to go before it can claim a full return to its days of prosperity, and the best evidence is in the stairs:

Scattered throughout Herron-Norton Place (and much of this section of Northside Indianapolis, in fact) are the last remnants of the homes that used to be. The home has long been demolished, and all that remains are the stairs that once led from the sidewalk to the front porch; apparently the demolition crew deemed it too costly to rip out the pavement here. Metaphorically, these stairs to nothing remind us of the families of Indianapolis’ gilded age, a network of affluence rent apart after decades of racial and economic turmoil, which is slowly patching itself together into a markedly different milieu. Literally, the stairs point out vacant lots and excellent opportunities for urban infill.

At this point, such stairs embody much of the character of the Herron-Morton neighborhood. They are the “missing teeth” of a neighborhood restoring itself through a general fidelity to the original architectural vernacular, with a few interesting deviations, as this photo gallery can attest. The inclusion of some overtly contemporary architectural styles suggests that existing residents (and their neighborhood association) do not aggressively enforce the historic district status here at Herron-Morton. My suspicion is that, as the neighborhood becomes more intact, its residents will push more vigorously for greater cohesion in design standards, but until all the existing houses are restored, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that any infill respectful of the urban grid pattern, with garages or carriage houses tucked in the back alley, makes for a desirable newcomer.

Returning to those stairs to nowhere, they offer a strong portal for an investigation into what comprises true urbanism in a previously devastated neighborhood that is trying to recover. In some cases, they lead to a shaggy, largely overgrown lots with relatively mature trees:

The stairs are difficult to see without my identification through the red circle. Ostensibly the home here was demolished quite some time ago, judging from the size of a trees growing precisely where the home’s foundation might have once stood. And it is highly unlikely that owners would have planted the smaller tree (more like an overgrown shrub) so close to the stairs that it impinges upon movement. Whether it is the neighbor in the large Queen Anne to its left who has planted trees and maintained the lawn to a relative degree, this property would appear rife with development potential. Here are two other strong examples:

Again, the size of trees suggests that demolition predates the 1986 historic district designation. The stairs to nowhere simply reinforce the regularity of lot lines and the possibility for continued urban infill.

But crumbling old concrete stairways do not leave a compelling enough thumbprint to convince everyone to abide by the earlier standards of urban living. Urban residential parcels in Midwestern cities tend to emphasize depth at the expense of width, with a prevailing compactness that does not appeal to many of today’s homebuyers, as manifested by archetypes that have exploded in suburban growth everywhere. Homes in the cities are close together; curb cuts for driveways are non-existent since garages are in back alleys (if they exist at all); and building footprints often occupy well over fifty percent of a parcel, leaving little room for spacious front or back yards. This impels some residents to take advantage of the versatility of vacant lots in neighborhoods such as Herron-Morton:

The original home clearly didn’t have such a sprawling side yard, but the owners bought it and built the lush garden here. Such a gesture is good for reducing the potential visual blight induced by vacant lots, but from the perspective of a broader urbanity, it doesn’t offer much benefit. It would appear that the owners of this house prefer the patina and stylistic gestures of a formerly classy turn of the century neighborhood, but they have created a buffer to mitigate the characteristics of city living that they dislike. The wrought-iron gate is handsome and possibly justifiable (it’s still a neighborhood of slightly above average crime) and the garden is well-maintained, but if everyone made this decision with an adjacent vacant lot, would Herron-Morton of the 21^st century come close to honoring the heritage of the Herron-Morton of the 19^th? Few urban neighborhoods today are as densely populated as they were a century ago, even without blight and disinvestment. The milieu supporting Herron-Morton has changed: fertility rates are lower, households are smaller, and nearly all of these homes used to shelter families of at least six. Today it is frequently a childless couple putting the down payment for a mortgage one of these stately homes. When they buy a house and the adjacent vacant lot, they are diluting the urban character one would ostensibly think they are seeking in making the decision to live in a neighborhood just a mile north of downtown.

Yet this phenomenon happens all across the country, sometimes expedited through municipal policy. After Hurricane Katrina, the City of New Orleans confronted a vast swath of unrecoverable properties that the original owners, in abandoning the city, happily sold to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA), an agency that existed long before Katrina to eliminate and prevent slums and blight through expropriation of real property. Though the city was no stranger to abandonment and blighted neighborhoods before the storm, after Katrina some previously economically healthy areas such as Lakeview (which received anywhere from 8 to 12 feet of floodwater) faced a glut of moldy structures which have either sat rotting or have been torn down. Recent photographs, courtesy of Michael Duplantier, show the formerly densely-settled Lakeview neighborhood four years after the storm:

Like the stairways to nowhere in Herron-Morton Place, the pavement is often all that remains, though flat New Orleans usually just relies on a walkway instead of a stairway to the front porch. What should be obvious is that the demand to live in Lakeview post-Katrina pales in comparison to its desirability before the storm. Many of the most badly damaged parts of metro New Orleans such as Lakeview suffer the “Jack-o’-lantern effect”, in which intermittent homes on a block have been fully restored and the rest of the block (sometimes over 50%) remains abandoned or vacant. Replacement homes are often jarring. To the far left in the photo below is a house with a massing and height that seems out of character with the neighborhood. Sure, it's big, but it's also been elevated on piers of over 12 feet to protect it in the event of a future potential flood.

After Katrina, the City of New Orleans initiated the Lot Next Door Program, which gives adjacent property owners with a homestead exemption the first opportunity to purchase NORA-owned properties at fair market value, if the property is to the left or rear. The owners may then develop the property as they see fit. First sales began earlier this year, and the most common result is a widespread imitation of what has taken place only in select locations at Herron-Morton Place: landowners purchase the adjacent property, clean it up, and then expand it into a yard or additional off-street parking. In short, they landowners are bringing suburban lot dimensions and characteristics to a formerly densely settled, urban neighborhood. Here's an example where of a homeowner who has apparently claimed the adjacent lot where a house formerly stood:

Whichever homeowner has the title on the fenced-in space now boasts a side yard where he or she once had a neighbor, thereby de-densifying the area when this technique is applied in aggregate. While I am not fond of this in either New Orleans or Indianapolis, I withhold condemnation of this act because I don’t live in the area and most likely cannot fully respect the variety of problems that vacant lots (or particularly vacant houses) pose: dumping sites, enticements for vermin, and criminal hideouts are among the first that come to mind. The example cited in the Times-Picayune article listed above is characteristic of only some of the beneficiaries of the Lot Next Door program, since the homeowners in this instance were dealing with neighboring blight and vacancies for years prior to the storm. But the rationale for buying vacant lots in New Orleans—across neighborhoods both rich and poor—overwhelmingly favors using the new property to expand a yard instead of building and selling a new house on that parcel. Thus, even committed urban residents seem to want to bring a piece of suburbia with them. This of course, is not the case in every urban setting: Boston’s Beacon Hill would lose most of its marketability if every other townhome was demolished to build a side yard, and even in relatively low density cities like Indianapolis, an intact historic neighborhood such as Lockerbie Square thrives on having few vacant lots and small yards.

Planners and neighborhood activists will most likely have to find a negotiable middle ground in addressing urban infill. Forbidding people from using adjacent lots as expanded yards may hinder demand for the old neighborhood, thereby slowing its development. Yet if every vacant lot becomes a private recreational playfield, the historic integrity becomes significantly compromised and it often loses the qualities that make the neighborhood quintessentially urban. Ideally Herron-Morton will find its niche as a sufficiently large urban-loving demographic sees those stairs to nowhere and seeks to replicate the closeness of the homes, using infill capabilities to retain the original lot dimensions, with only a few compromises. In this regard, the stairs to nowhere serve as the optimal reminders to those prospective buyers of what the neighborhood once was, and what it hopefully soon again will be.