Architecturewriter

Katrina at 20: One key research question I investigated was why New Orleanians had such a hard time returning and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Visiting the city and speaking with residents of the Lower Ninth Ward indicated the situation among those who returned. But what about those who didn't – or couldn't? For this purpose, I visited African American long-term evacuees who lived in Houston in 2007 who were from the Lower Ninth Ward and who shared information on their personal situation with me. Reasons included the degree of destruction of housing and access to resources for rebuilding, which pointed out vulnerability in relation to ethnicity and poverty.  The EFMSV Conference in Bonn took place in 2008 and focused on displacement and forced migration due to environmental stress and disaster. My paper and presentation featured my empirical research on rebuilding efforts after Katrina. During the conference, I had the opportunity to speak with Anthony Oliver-Smith, a re...

Katrina at 20: In 2012 I was awarded a doctorate at the Bauhaus University Weimar for my research on planning in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After identifying the reasons why residents couldn't return and rebuild following evacuation, I concluded that the focus on single family homeownership during the reconstruction phase led to a recovery bottleneck particularly among vulnerable populations – African Americans who owned properties of low value or were renters. Property value was the determinant for how much funding homeowners would receive from the Road Home program. And the focus on single family residences didn't solve the problem where prospective returnees would live during their individual rebuilding process. My proposal was to focus on small rental properties as pilot projects of recovery. They were common in the city before Katrina, fit into neighborhoods of various density, and would allow multiple returnees a place to stay before their actual h...

Time flies when you're having an insightful and fun discussion with colleagues on issues you care about. This was the case at the 8th University Day for National Urban Development Policy on „Shaping the Future in Uncertain Times - Paving the Way for a New Planning Culture“, 2nd and 3rd June 2023. Hosted by János Brenner, Detlef Kurth and Silke Weidner, Bohdan Cherkes, Stefan Greiving and I had the opportunity to propose a number of talking points for discussion with the audience, under the watchful eye of the witty Julian Wékel. Our forum topic was "Rethinking Resilience – Security and Critical Infrastructure as Planning Tasks." A key takeaway was that it is entirely justified to talk about destruction to cultural landscapes and cities due to either war, environmental disaster, or both in a joint manner – since the impact of each of them has become ubiquitous due to rapid changes to political and natural contexts. Posting the four related pages from the pdf documentation ...