New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize

Strategic Forecasting ^ | 9/02/2005 | George Friedman

[cll]

New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there. New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to. Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.

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[Pessimist]

No doubt tons of federal dollars will be blow resurrecting NO from the mud. But to my mind its all a waste.

Some places are just not meant to live in. It isn't like land in this country is in such short supply that they couldn't locate elsewhere.

As for logistical problems regarding the port, this is a golden opportunity to build a new, modern world class facility elsewhere.

As for the policital ramifications: Does anyone really think the citizens of NO will ever show any gratitude to Bush no matter what he does?

[angkor]

Hastert said ... a recipe for disaster and he was immediately criticized for being insensitive.... But, at least in part, he was right.

No, he was fully right. 100 percent right.

PC prevails again in stark defiance of common sense.

[Wallaby]

Here's a sensible suggestion: move New Orleans to higher ground, between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya.

[Wallaby]

Here's a sensible suggestion: move New Orleans to higher ground, between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Idiocy.

Here is the next man made disaster just waiting to happen in Louisiana, and the economic fallout will make Katrina look pale in comparison.



http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:5fNE2-FnzKcJ:www.uh.edu/engines/epi1135.htm++Mississippi+river+to+flow+down+old+river+sooner+or+later&hl=en

[Tarpon]

The City of NO is really a port at the mouth of THE GREAT RIVER ROAD. That port is to important to the country to abandon. It can be fixed and made safer.

[Wallaby]

pardon the stutter post.

[Tarpon]

Well Biloxi Mississippi proved floating didn't work either. But high rise condos with proper storm shutters will work. There are plenty of ways to build and live with the hazard, just not the way it was being done. This is one place where low rent project housing may be most appropriate.

The Netherlands has a similar issue and they seem to be coping with it.

[dirtboy]

Thanks for the callout, Wallaby.

It isn't rocket science. There are four threats to NOLA - hurricane flooding, river flooding, subsidence and a channel shift. Moving the city between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya would deal with all four. I imagine folks a lot smarter than me have already figured that out and other folks smarter than me are more than capable of designing it and building it. But first we have to take the collective lot of politicians who turned a property catastrophe into a humanitarian catastrophe and somehow give them brain implants so they can do the rebuilding right once.

[dirtboy]

See my solution linked in post #24. It deals with that.

[Uncle Donuts]

They have to rebuild it somewhere.

Where else will I get to see boobies for 29-cent beads?

[heartwood]

I don't think the North Sea storms get quite as bad as hurricanes, though they did have a killer in 1953. And then the Dutch were, well, Dutch. Now they have imported a resentful underclass, just like we did long ago.

[capt. norm]

This is probably a silly question, but could they rebuild it--at least most of it--on higher ground?

Yeah, the same way they can open a ski resort at Mt. Prospect, Illinois.

Those not familiar with Chicago burbs might not get that.

[dfwgator]

The Netherlands doesn't get hurricanes.

[js1138]

I picture a New World Venice...with alligators.

And mosquitoes. I do envision a lot of structures on stilts. Not a lot of shanties.

[Steve_Stifler]

You'll always have "Girls Gone Wild."

[Tarpon]

The Netherlands doesn't get hurricanes.

True they get worse.

[Tarpon]

IIRC they are trying to protect against 40 foot surge. A whole lot of their country is under sea level and the north sea storms are fierce.

It's pretty easy to protect against the wind, the surge is what destroys everything.

[dfwgator]

You mean they get worse than 145+ MPH winds and 15 foot storm surges?