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Help City-Works Advocate for a better New Orleans!
Recently, City-Works
sent an invitation to participate in our Capacity Campaign. We are
incredibly thankful for the support that has been given to us, but we
still need your help! Donations to City-Works can be made at our website.
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Spotlight
on Sustainability:
Rebuilding Resources
New Orleans has a variety of
resource centers, warehouses, and local businesses that supply
architectural salvage to the Greater New Orleans area. Recycling and
reusing architectural elements from demolished and unused buildings frees
landfill space, and maintains New Orleans' unique architecture.
City-Works sees the value in creating a sustainable built environment
that occurs when resources are shared, recycled and adaptable to the
needs of New Orleans.
All
locations accept donations of appropriate building materials. Also, local
businesses, Ricca's Architectural Sales and
The Bank Antique Sales
offer antique and salvaged rebuilding resources.
Photo courtesy of The Green Project.
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Website of the Month
Neighborhoods Partnership Network
works to connect New Orleans' neighborhood organizations to nonprofit
resources and other organizations with similar needs and concerns. The
NPN website and The Trumpet, the NPN
monthly newspaper, offer resource and program information.
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Greetings Everyone,
City-Works
is pleased to announce the release of our newest version of our New
Orleans Neighborhood map. A link to both the map and corresponding
position paper are below. Also, this month in our Spotlight on
Sustainability, we highlight the exciting and unfortunately necessary
world of Architectural salvage. We have also included our thoughts on
the recent natural disasters both in this country and abroad.
Here's an update:
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City-Works
Neighborhood Map
City-Works is pleased to announce
the release of our revised New Orleans Neighborhood map. This map is
improved from previous versions with updated boundaries, clearer
service areas and updated contact information. As a part of this
upgrade, we have written a synopsis of what we did to create the map,
how we did it, our findings, and our suggestions for further action to
support neighborhoods.
City-Works has tracked 270
organizations in the city, finding through survey data that the
neighborhood organizations are, in fact, very integral to the
rebuilding of the city. Anecdotally, we have all heard that rebuilding
in New Orleans, to the extent it has happened, has occurred because of
the work done by neighborhood organizations. Our report verifies that,
adding survey data to show activity of neighborhood organizations in
the rebuilding process.
Among other things, many
organizations have overlapping boundaries, but do not necessarily share
priorities. Those organizations who remained dry were more concerned
with quality of life issues, while those who flooded remained chiefly
concerned with housing. Both reasonable and predictable priorities
given the needs of these communities. More people per capita are
participating in neighborhood organizations after the storm as well - a
72% increase per capita to 14.1% of the city's population.
Given these findings, and our work with city and neighborhood
organizations, we recommend creating a City Office of Neighborhoods to
help provide technical assistance and support to the groups who are
truly doing much of the rebuilding of New Orleans.
For the full report, please CLICK HERE.
For the updated map, CLICK HERE.
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Natural Disasters
On May
3rd, 2008 Cyclone Nargis struck the coast of Myanmar. On May 10,
devestating tornados struck Oklahoma, Misouri, and Georgia. On May 11,
a horrible earthquake struck China.
At the time of this newsletter, these natural disasters, both in the
United States and abroad, have only given us a glimpse into the damage.
The economic and infrastructure damage will be tremendous; but most
importantly the peoples of these areas have a long road ahead of
them. City-Works sees the similarities between New Orleans' experience
with Hurricane Katrina, and what is currently happening in Yangon and
throughout Myanmar especially, but also on individual levels both
domestically with the tornado damage and in the earthquake ravaged
sections of China.
In particular, both Yangon and New Orleans are low-lying, densely
populated port cities that are incredibly vulnerable to storm
devastation. New Orleans now shares the experience of loss of life,
displacement, inadequate governmental response, and lack of basic
necessities with the people of Myanmar.
We understand what is ahead for these places better than any place in
the United States and we understand what can help. We all know what the
immediate aftermath is like, but we have learned so much over the past
2 1/2 years that we have an obligation to share our knowledge.
The people of Myanmar, China, and our own country need our assistance.
Right now, we can help financially through supporting the recovery
efforts of both the International Committee of
the Red Cross and Red Crescent. You can
donate here and here. Moving ahead, we
have an obligation to create a local mechanism that will allow us to
share our knowledge in rebuilding devestated areas with other communities
who will enevitably need it.
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Our Newsletters
All of City-Works' previous newsletters are now available on our
website. For more about the work we have been doing, please check them
out online, HERE.
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City-Works is a
501(c)3 organization dedicated to sustainable rebuilding of New
Orleans' community, economy, and built environment. For more
information about our organization, please visit us on the web:
City-Works
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