NNO: Worse than condemned
What’s worse than a demolished neighborhood?
An abandoned one, of the kind now appearing in the dying parts of Old New Orleans, as this New York Times story illustrates:
NEW ORLEANS, June 19 — In a blunt admission that the city could no longer control its growing crime problem, Mayor C. Ray Nagin asked the state on Monday to send National Guard troops to help patrol the streets of New Orleans.
Like its physical counterpart, economic nature abhors a vacuum, and when there is infrastructure without society, it is occupied by society’s predators and parasites.
Question: Who likes to rent a squalid, unpoliced, dank space?
Answer: Drug dealers and other criminals
Drug dealer’s office, Stateway Gardens, Chicago, public housing
Large urban spaces are complex, and therefore very hard to police from outside:
The city’s Police Department has seemed ineffective at curbing a rise in drug-related violence and looting — which is isolated, for the most part, to poor neighborhoods and sparsely populated areas — even though there are almost as many officers on the force now as there were before Hurricane Katrina, and the city’s population of 220,000 is less than half its former size.
Cops police space; people police people. It takes more than police to make neighborhoods safe, it takes citizens and neighbors, and isolated clumps of occupied homes amidst empty shells is a criminal magnet.
Empty houses … criminal activity
The five young men who were killed before dawn on Saturday were ages 16 to 19, and, said Chief Riley, three of the five had criminal backgrounds. The three were involved in a drive-by shooting in another part of the city on May 1, the chief said. They were charged with aggravated assault and the possession of a weapon, but the victim and witnesses refused to cooperate and press charges, so they were freed.
A ‘code of silence’ is an observant-herd response; the herd reaching the entirely rational conclusion that the few police will go away while the more crooks will remain. Refusal to cooperate with authorities is powerful evidence that a neighborhood has sociologically seceded from the city and civilization.
Precisely the same order-without-law arises in large public housing properties (called ‘estates’ in the UK and ‘cites’ in France) where gang and tribe structures replace local and municipal ones.
The best thing to do with public housing family high-rises.
Creation of alternate structures is easier when established ones are discredited, like
The [police] department has not bounced back from the storm. It has suffered sharp budget cuts, is low on supplies like ammunition and continues to wrestle with its tarnished reputation. The police lost control of the city when the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina, and while many officers managed to perform their duties under extraordinary circumstances, more than 200 simply walked away. Others were accused of participating in the mayhem.
Warren J. Riley, the police chief, said he requested additional law enforcement help months ago in anticipation of a summertime population increase, and said the announcement after a weekend of high crime was simply a coincidence.
“New Orleans is a marvelous place for coincidence.”
Meanwhile, the city’s decisionless drift continues:
No neighborhoods have been ruled out for rebuilding, no matter how damaged or dangerous.
No decisions have been made on what kind of housing, if any, will replace the mold-ridden empty hulks that stretch endlessly in many areas. No one really knows exactly how the $10.4 billion in federal housing aid will be spent, and guidance for residents in vulnerable areas has been minimal.
There is a worse answer than a fast No, and it is a slow I-Don’t-Know.
