[StBernard] LRA Town Planners Move Location of Rebuilding Charrette to be Closer to Arabi Residents

[Westley Annis]

LRA's Town Planners Move Location of Rebuilding Charrette to be Closer to
Arabi Residents Charrette Begins Tomorrow


ARABI, La. - In a new twist on the tradition of seeking solutions by getting
as many people as possible "into the tent," the Louisiana Recovery
Authority's (LRA) community charrette process now moves under a real tent in
hurricane-devastated St. Bernard Parish. The charrette team will work from
March 7-15 in a tent at the St.Bernard Parish Government Complex at 8201
West Judge Perez Drive in Chalmette.

"We have to be in the thick of it," said Andres Duany, after a weekend tour
of St. Bernard Parish, where he walked the streets and talked to locals. "If
we had kept our work inside a downtown New Orleans hotel, we might have
thought we were being more productive. But the truth is, we'll be more
productive wherever the community feels most involved. I'm not sure people
would have come to us in a hotel in New Orleans. We should come to them."

Duany, a principal in the planning and architecture firm Duany Plater-Zyberk
& Co., has been leading a team! of designers and planners from his own firm
and consultants from around the country in a series of three intensive
planning charrettes sponsored by the LRA. The LRA targeted three distinct
post-hurricane situations in South Louisiana. The St. Bernard Parish event,
scheduled for March 7-15, is the third of these design charrettes. 

The term, borrowed from the French, means "little cart." Duany pioneered a
charrette process for town and neighborhood planning that uses the pressure
of a set deadline to inspire a collaborative, all-inclusive effort to
achieve solutions on a fast track. 

What emerges from Duany-style charrettes are not only ideas but finished
plans and even zoning codes that can move to the implementation stage. 

In Lake Charles, where the first of the three charrettes took place last
month, the team's final presentation was scheduled for a standing city
council meeting where the council unanimously endorsed the entire plan. 

In New Iberia, after the second charrette, local citizens and elected
leaders warmly applauded proposals for three small towns in the region.

In St. Bernard Parish, where the challenge is to provide a plan for the
rebuilding of a community where the overwhelming majority of structures were
damaged beyond repair by Hurricane Katrina, the charrette team will work
each day in a tent at the St.Bernard Parish Government Complex at 8201 West
Judge Perez Drive in Chalmette. The designers will be surrounded by
temporary hurricane relief offices and workers, where residents have easy
access. "It's the charrette of our dreams," says Duany.

For further information on charrettes, visit the website at
www.louisianaspeaks.org
<http://keelson.eatel.net/websites/la.gov/action.cfm?md=communication&task=a
ddClick&msg_ID=1136&ID=d%29ibeDi%2EnSn%29&redirect=http://www.louisianaspeak
s.org>  or the Louisiana Recovery Authority website at www.lra.louisiana.gov
.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated South Louisiana, destroying more than
200,000 homes and 18,000 businesses and inflicting about $25 billion in
insured losses. 

The LRA, a 26-member body appointed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to
identify and prioritize short- and long-term needs of the recovery, is the
planning and coordinating body that will assist in implementing the
Governor's vision for the recovery of Louisiana. It will seek out and value
local input as it plans and implements the recovery. 

The LRA is supported by the LRA Support Foundation, a private, nonprofit
organization that has raised private funds to secure the current team of
world-renowned planners and experts who are responsible for developing plans
for rebuilding South Louisiana. 


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