THE CRAVING FOR PUBLIC SQUARES

August 27, 2016 by Charlie London

sent in by Keith Hardie

Here is an essay by Michael Kimmelman about the importance of public squares from the April, 2016 issue of the New York Review of Books. A good read, and something urban planners should keep in mind: every neighborhood should have a public square, now more than ever. Building a great city “requires not just making attractive buildings but providing citizens with generous, creative, open, inviting public spaces.”

The Craving for Public Squares

Michael Kimmelman

public squares, Berlin, 1997
Joachim Schulz/ullstein bild/Getty Images

Ludwigkirchplatz, Berlin, 1997

The twenty-first century is the first urban century in human history, the first time more people on the planet live in cities than don’t. Experts project that some 75 percent of the booming global population will be city dwellers by 2050. Dozens of new cities are springing up in Asia, their growth hastened by political unrest, climate change, and mass relocation programs that have cleared vast swaths of the Chinese countryside. Much of the growth in countries like India and Bangladesh is chaotic and badly planned. In many growing cities across the Global South there are serious shortages of water, sanitation, and housing, along with increasing air pollution. The United States has some of the same problems on a smaller scale, while here urban development is also being stimulated by growing numbers of university graduates and empty-nesters who are rejuvenating downtowns and rejecting suburbia, the culture of commuting, sprawl, and the automobile.

Not that suburbs have stopped growing, but since the late 1990s, the share of automobiles driven by people in their twenties in America has fallen from 20.8 percent to 13.7 percent. The number of nineteen-year-olds opting out of driver’s licenses has tripled since the 1970s from 8 to 23 percent. Electric, self-driving vehicles may soon revolutionize transportation and urban land use. Meanwhile, deindustrialization, plummeting crime rates, and increasing populations of singles and complex, nontraditional families have reshaped many formerly desolate urban neighborhoods.

People are moving downtown for jobs, but also for the pleasures and benefits of cultural exchange, walkable streets, parks, and public squares. Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. The public square has always been synonymous with a society that acknowledges public life and a life in public, which is to say a society distinguishing the individual from the state. There were, strictly speaking, no public squares in ancient Egypt or India or Mesopotamia. There were courts outside temples and royal houses, and some wide processional streets.

By the sixth century BC, the agora in Athens was a civic center, and with the rise of democracy, became a center for democracy’s institutions, the heart of public life. In ancient Greek, the word “agora” is hard to translate. In Homer it could imply a “gathering” or “assembly”; by the time of Thucydides it had come to connote the public center of a city, the place around which the rest of the city was arranged, where business and politics were conducted in public—the place without which Greeks did not really regard a town or city as a town or city at all. Rather, such a place was, as the second-century writer Pausanias roughly put it, just a sorry assortment of houses and ancient shrines.

The agora announced the town as a polis. Agoras grew in significance during the Classical and Hellenistic years, physical expressions of civic order and life, with their temples and fishmongers and bankers at money-changing tables and merchants selling oil and wine and pottery. Stoas, or colonnades, surrounded the typical agora, and sometimes trees provided shade. People who didn’t like cities, and disliked democracy in its messiness, complained that agoras mixed religious and sacrilegious life, commerce, politics, and theater. But of course that was also their attraction and significance. The agora symbolized civil justice; it was organic, changeable, urbane. Even as government moved indoors and the agora evolved over time into the Roman forum, a grander, more formal place, the notion of the public square as the soul of urban life remained, for thousands of years, critical to the self-identity of the state.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that early in 2011 the Egyptian revolution centered around Tahrir Square, or that the Occupy Movement later that same year, partly inspired by the Arab Spring, expressed itself by taking over squares like Taksim in Istanbul, the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, and Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. And I don’t think it’s coincidental that the strangers who came together at places like Zuccotti and Taksim all formed pop-up towns on these sites, producing in miniature form (at least temporarily) what they imagined to be the outlines of a city, with distinct spaces designated for legal services, libraries, medical stations, media centers, kitchens serving free food, and general stores handing out free clothing.

Aristotle talked about an ideal polis that extended the distance of a herald’s cry, a civic space not so large that people could no longer communicate face-to-face. In Zuccotti Park, a contained space only a block long and wide, the police allowed protesters, who were prevented from using loudspeakers, to communicate by repeating phrase by phrase, like a mass game of telephone, what public speakers said, so that everyone, as it were, spoke in one voice. As in any healthy city or town, the occupants did not in fact all agree about goals and dreams or about how to bring about political and social change, even while they shared the same space; and without a sustained and organized structure of governance, their spontaneous occupation inevitably came apart, even before it was invaded and dispersed by the police. That said, for a time Zuccotti became a physical manifestation of democratic impulses and hopes embedded, since the days of the agora, in the very notion of a public square.

I grew up in Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs’s old neighborhood, where Washington Square Park was a place I met friends, cooled off in the fountain, played catch with my dad, and people-watched. It was the heart of what was then a scruffier but more diverse and venturesome neighborhood than today’s Village. The city’s urban-planning czar Robert Moses notoriously wanted to drive an avenue straight through the middle of Washington Square. That the Village has become one of the most desirable and expensive places in the world is in no small measure due to Moses’s failure and the park’s survival. The good life, wrote another great New York urbanist of Jacobs’s era, Lewis Mumford, involves more than shared prosperity; it entails what Mumford described as an almost religious refashioning of values based on an ecological view of the city.

Seen whole, in all its variety and interconnectedness, urban health is expressed physically in a natural configuration of built forms across the city. The art of architecture requires not just making attractive buildings but providing citizens with generous, creative, open, inviting public spaces. And one of the basic truths of urban life turns out to be that there’s a nearly insatiable demand for such places. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, New York City inaugurated a program to convert streets across the five boroughs into plazas and squares.

Making Times Square into a pedestrian mall was the program’s main event. But the mayor’s office invited communities everywhere to suggest disused traffic triangles, parking lots, and other forlorn sites in far-flung areas that might also be reimagined. Dozens of new public spaces were proposed. The city carted in potted trees, benches, chairs, and tables, and voilà, new squares were created. Since then, they have not all been well maintained or supported by City Hall. But some of them made an immediate difference in reducing crime, boosting local commerce, and improving street life.

The big news was just how much people craved public squares. Madison Square Park, lately renovated and one of the loveliest parks in New York City, faces the Flatiron Building, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway cross. The two avenues created for years what was the widest and most unmanageable street crossing in Manhattan. The Bloomberg administration’s idea was to turn the middle of that street into a new public plaza. One day I ran across Michael Bierut, whose design firm, Pentagram, faces the site, and he told me he had thought the plaza was a crazy plan when he first heard about it. Who in the world would sit in the middle of the street, he wondered, when you had one of the most beautiful parks in the city right there?

“Was I wrong,” Michael recalled after the plaza was completed when I spoke with him for a column in The New York Times. Today, the place is full of people on nice days, its café tables and umbrellas scattered where trucks had rumbled down Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The new square instantly became one of the most successful public spaces in the city, with people toting prosciutto sandwiches out of Eataly, the nearby Italian food market, and Shake Shack burgers out of the park just to sit in the middle of traffic—because from there you can see the Flatiron Building one way and the Empire State Building the other, but also for the reason people gravitate to Trafalgar Square in London or the Piazza della Signoria in Florence as opposed to Hampstead Heath or the Boboli Gardens: to be in the middle of things.

As retreats, parks give us room to breathe and feel alone. Squares reaffirm our commonality, our shared sense of place, and our desire to be included. “It’s why we congregate near the kitchen at a dinner party instead of in the living room,” is how Andy Wiley-Schwartz, who directed the plaza program during the Bloomberg administration, described to me the attraction of the square. “That’s where you see people coming and going to the fridge to grab a beer and watch stuff happen.”

A new public square in the Fawwar refugee camp in the West Bank, June 2014
Adam Ferguson/The New York Times/Redux

A new public square in the Fawwar refugee camp in the West Bank, June 2014

This impulse to watch stuff happen is universal. On another Times assignment, I visited a refugee camp in the southern West Bank called Fawwar. There, a Palestinian architect, Sandi Hilal, worked with residents of the camp to create a public square, something virtually unheard of in such places. For Palestinian refugees, the creation of any urban amenity, by implying normalcy and permanence, undermines their fundamental self-image, even after several generations have passed, as temporary occupants of the camps who preserve the right of return to Israel.

Moreover, in refugee camps, public and private do not really exist as they do elsewhere. There is, strictly speaking, no private property in the camps. Refugees do not own their homes. Streets are not municipal properties, as they are in cities, because refugees are not citizens of their host countries, and the camp is not really a city. The legal notion of a refugee camp, according to the United Nations, is a temporary site for displaced, stateless individuals, not a civic body.

So there is no municipality in Fawwar, just a UN relief agency whose focus is on emergency services. That’s what residents turn to when the lights go out or the garbage isn’t picked up, unless they want to deal with the problem themselves. Concepts like inside and outside are blurred in a place where there is no private property. A mother doesn’t always wear the veil in Fawwar, whether she’s at home or out on the street, because the whole place is, in a sense, her home; but she will put it on when she leaves the camp, because that is outside.

In other words, there is a powerful sense of community. And some years ago, Hilal—who then headed the Camp Improvement Unit in the West Bank for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, along with her husband, Alessandro Petti, an Italian architect—began to talk with Fawwar residents about creating a public square. The residents, especially the men, were immediately suspicious, not just about normalizing the camp but about creating any space where men and women might come together in public. Fawwar was established in 1950. It’s under a quarter of a square mile, just south of Hebron, crammed with nearly seven thousand people, many the descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948. “I feel at home here,” said one middle-aged resident who was born and reared in the camp. “I want the right of return so I can decide for myself if I want to live here. It’s a matter of freedom, choosing where you live.”

Of course, this entire question is complicated by the refusal of many Arab states to take in Palestinian refugees, a refusal partly based on the claim of right of return. And I’ve heard that a survey taken decades ago suggested that some Palestinians would trade this right if they received substantial compensation. But in Fawwar the issue of the right of return clearly binds residents to the camp as a site of shared sacrifice and resistance. “It’s an architectural issue, in one respect,” is how Hilal put it. What she meant about it being an architectural issue was that identity in the West Bank (although not only there) is invariably tied up with notions of belonging and place and expressed through architecture, including public spaces like squares.

Hilal showed me around the square she’d designed. She said that pushback was initially fierce. “When we merely mentioned the word ‘plaza,’ people in the camp freaked out,” she remembered. But a counterargument gradually took hold, which entailed abandoning what Hilal called “the strategy of convincing the whole world of the refugees’ misery through their architectural misery.” Hilal focused on women, young and old. At first they didn’t want to oppose the men who were against it. But they feared, in such a conservative enclave, that if the square were built, men would simply take it over, and that if women did try to use it, they would feel too exposed in an open space. They longed for someplace to gather outdoors with a screen or enclosure.

So the challenge became: How could a space be made open—so that men, women, and children might be able to gather together—while also allowing the women some privacy? It was decided that a wall of varying height should surround the square, which was about 7,500 square feet. Three disused shelters from the 1950s were torn down. The wall created a kind of house without a roof, a space at once open and contained. The architects interviewed residents whose homes faced the site, and negotiated with each one separately about the appearance of the wall in front of their houses. What resulted is a dusty, L-shaped place, made of limestone and concrete, with several entrances, which has stirred debate in the camp about the position of women.

The square has given children a place to play other than crowded streets. Mothers who rarely felt free to leave their homes to socialize in public now meet there to talk and weave, selling what they make in the square, an enterprise that is entirely new in the community and that one of the mothers told me “gives us self-esteem and a sense of worth, like the men have.”

“For me,” another mother said, “the radical change is that men here now look at women in a public square as a normal phenomenon. I can bring my kids. I can meet my friends here. We are in our homes all the time. We need to get out. We want to be free. Here, in the public square, we feel free.”

Her remark put me in mind of a square that seemed to me just about perfect. Some years ago, I moved to Berlin with my wife and our two sons in order to start a newspaper column on cultural and social affairs across Europe and elsewhere. We settled into an apartment on a quiet street in the west and soon discovered Ludwigkirchplatz, a square, two blocks away. It unfolded at the rear of a neo-Gothic redbrick church from the 1890s, St. Ludwig’s, one of the few freestanding churches in Berlin. Several streets converged from different angles onto the square, which used to be the center of Wilmersdorf, a leafy cobblestoned quarter whose roots go back at least to the thirteenth century. George Grosz and Heinrich Mann lived nearby. Not long ago, Wilmersdorf was subsumed by Berlin administrators into a larger borough, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, which includes the Ku’Damm—the Kurfürstendamm—West Berlin’s faded but undaunted version of Broadway or Paris’s Champs-Élysées, with its glossy auto dealerships and sprawling department stores.

Ludwigkirchplatz is off the beaten path. If several roads lead to it straight from the Ku’damm, they’re quiet, and you can still come upon the square as if upon a clearing in the woods. These are slumbering streets of stucco, stone, and concrete apartment blocks with funny little shops selling belly-dancing supplies, gay sex toys, Cuban cigars, and German wine. The square announces itself gradually, from a distance, with the sound of children playing and church bells.

It’s not quite an hourglass shape, paved in patterned bricks and shaded by rows of linden trees, with café tables spilling from bars facing the square. A sandy playground squats below the bellowing apse of the church. A raised semicircle of benches looks back toward the café tables and onto a pair of slightly tilted concrete ping-pong tables, which do a brisk business in warm weather. A plaza between the café tables and the ping-pong tables is the square’s main stage, where skateboarders vie with toddlers, dog walkers, young mothers pushing high-priced strollers, and Wilmersdorf widows, the last generation of war survivors, not unlike the Italian matrons whom I recall from my childhood in the Village, and similarly disapproving.

Someday we will lose all this and return home, I told myself whenever I arrived in that beautiful square under the towering church steeple and settled onto the benches beside the playground, where our children loved to play. The square was a home, drawing us daily as it did our neighbors. With the usual mix of sadness and pride, I watched our older son, just eight when we moved, grow up game by game, learning to play ping-pong on the lopsided tables; I watched our younger boy learn to walk in the sandbox near the swings. In December, when the square was silent and briefly taken over by Turkish immigrants selling Christmas trees, we lugged our tree to our apartment after a heavy German lunch in an old corner bar that had an especially lovely view of the slumbering playground and barren branches through steamfogged windows.

We declared spring’s arrival as soon as we could clear the snow from the ping-pong tables. Wilmersdorfers desperate for winter to end were there, too, wrapped in blankets, shivering at the outdoor café tables facing the square. If a polis is measured by the length of a herald’s cry, a parish extends the distance of a church bell’s ring, and the bells of St. Ludwig’s, while deafening in the square, filtered through the surrounding streets, binding the neighborhood together.

On our final day before moving back to New York, one of those cruelly perfect, sun-kissed summer Sundays in Berlin, my older son and I returned to the square for a few last games. The square was packed with newly arrived Russian émigrés and children carrying ice cream cones from the Italian gelateria facing the playground. “Everything is as it should be,” Nabokov once wrote. “Nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.” The smell of fresh bread wafted from an organic bakery, just off the square, mixing with the perfume of lindens in bloom. Skateboards rattled over the stone plaza. The bells tolled for what seemed like an hour that afternoon. We played game after game, vainly hoping to slow time.

The perfect square, it turns out, is also a state of mind.

The Craving for Public Squares

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Featured, HISTORY, Living Well Tagged With: faubourg st john, fortier park, keith hardie, New Orleans, parks, public spaces, recreation

Help Feed New Orleanians – Buy Capstone Honey at Terranova’s

August 4, 2016 by Charlie London

HELP FEED NEW ORLEANIANS

CAPSTONE is a non-profit in the Lower 9th Ward. Capstone is a small non profit that has taken previously blighted or vacant lots in the Lower Ninth Ward and developed them into productive gardens and orchards. Located in part of a food desert, Capstone grows and provides food at no cost to those who need it. Capstone also assists others in starting their own gardens or allows others to garden on their lots when space is available.

Your hive adoption and donation supports their mission to grow food on previously vacant lots and share it with those in need. It also supports other Capstone programs which empower others to grow their own food.

honey-capstone4textCAPSTONE Raw Honey is made from an assortment of local floral varieties. Capstone never feeds their honey bees high fructose corn syrup.
Capstone Raw Honey is only put through a strainer to ensure it retains all of its natural goodness. It is never ultra-filtered, heated, or diluted with high fructose corn syrup.

Each harvest is kept separate and each jar labeled showing the month and year of harvest. Each floral season gives our honey a unique color and flavor. It also contains different pollens from the different times of the year if you are using it for allergy relief.

terranovasWhen you think of a business that is always helping the neighborhood, who do you think of?

Terranova’s

When you think of a business where they try to make you leave with a smile, where do you think of?

Terranova’s

So, naturally, when you think of a business that would support a non-profit with the sale of honey, what business do you think of?

Terranova’s

Go buy some Capstone Raw Honey at Terranova’s today!

Terranova’s Superette  |  3308 Esplanade Avenue  |  New Orleans, LA  70119

***

Your donations of time, supplies, or money to Capstone will help make their projects successful.

If you would like to donate your time as a volunteer or arrange for your group to volunteer please contact Capstone and they will be glad to work with you.

If you have supplies or materials you would like to donate to Capstone please contact Capstone and they will make arrangements to accept your donation and utilize it to help our community. Some examples would be gardening tools, plants, seeds, construction tools or rebuilding materials.

Capstone is a 501 (c) (3) non profit and will gladly accept your financial donation.
You will be issued a non profit receipt to use as a tax deduction if you wish.
 
 
 

Capstone accepts PayPal

You may mail a check to:
Capstone118, Inc.
1641 Deslonde St.
New Orleans, La 70117

Capstone is a small non profit that has taken previously blighted or vacant lots in the Lower Ninth Ward and developed them into productive gardens and orchards. Located in part of a food desert Capstone grows and provides food at no cost to those who need it.
http://www.capstone118.org/

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, CRIME, Featured, HISTORY, Living Well Tagged With: bayou st john, best neighborhood in New Orleans, blight, blighted lots, capstone, faubourg st john, honey, New Orleans, new orleans best neighborhood, non-profit, terranova, terranovas, urban farming

Optimizing Blight Strategies

August 23, 2014 by Charlie London

A previously blighted home on Verna Street.   photo by Charlie London
A previously blighted home on Verna Street.
photo by Charlie London
New Orleanians are rightfully concerned about blighted properties. Although blight has declined substantially since 2008 thanks to billions of federal housing dollars, New Orleans still has 43,755 blighted homes or empty lots. This 2010 report includes a review of economic and housing trends that are effecting blight, a broad set of principles to help guide various efforts to eliminate blight in New Orleans, and an analysis of neighborhood housing markets. Finally, this report provides recommendations for maximizing the potential of available resources for eliminating blight, including how neighborhood organizations can supplement public efforts.

Click here for the 2010 Report on
Optimizing Blight Strategies

NPP-CityNPP-CityBook

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings Tagged With: blight, New Orleans

Blight Reduction Strategy

March 18, 2014 by Charlie London

An analysis by Justin Kray

blight-blueAs a City Planner and former lead architect of the BlightStat program while working at OPA, I am in a unique position to offer some deeper insight on this story. There are many interconnected issues at work here, but the central question is how effectively the City executed upon the blight strategy, and the danger of using “Stat” meetings to create positive spin in the public sphere. This seems especially important to understand given that other cities are now seeking to emulate/adapt these models.

  1. At its core, BlightStat sought to employ data to drive better decision making – yet no analysis is provided in the 2014 “victory report” as to whether such a structural shift actually occurred. A look back through the monthly BlightStat reports show that core operational inefficiencies persist. One explanation is that no meaningful mechanism exists for attaching consequences to poor performance. In fact, I observed just the opposite – if a department is can manage to meet its targets under budget constraints, it is asked to do more with less; however if a well-connected department lagging on indicators can make the case that they are under-resourced, they can be rewarded. A cautionary tale in connecting budgets to performance measurement in a political environment.
  2. GIS mapping software, which holds the potential to inform spatially-strategic decisions, was never meaningfully harnessed to direct Code Enforcement action. Whole blocks of valuable historic blighted housing literally burned to the ground during the height of the program. Database migration to new workflow-tracking software in 2012 actually lost upwards of 5,000 active blight cases – an oversight that the administration sought to shuttle once it was discovered – mostly because the blight-fight was already being treated internally as a cause célèbre.
  3. The 2014 Blight Reduction report which claims that the City had delivered on it’s promise of remediating 10,000 blighted properties uses a fuzzy statistical methodology instead of counting hard numbers. This was actually a strategic decision. Initially the BlightStat program tracked a complete list of blighted properties influenced through City action by unique address, but it was determined that some insulation could be provided by utilizing a statistical approach created by a third party. One of the key recommendations of Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC), who produced the initial estimate of blighted property in 2010, was that the City undertake a full survey and inventory of blighted property, but this was never completed, even though there were opportunities to use the BlightStat program to meet this objective. It is notable that a different statistician from UNO provided estimates for the 2014 report. A core weaknesses of relying upon statistics instead of hard numbers is that it does not permit measurable insight into the comparative effectiveness of the City’s blight remediation programs, and how much of that reduction was through private market action.
  4. A cornerstone of New Orleans’ award-winning blight strategy, and perhaps the only aspect which distinguishes it from other bulldoze & backfill blight strategies (such as the plan recently announced by Detroit) is the Code Lien Foreclosure program. This program sought to deliver 1,000 blighted properties to auction 2011 alone, yet far far fewer properties were moved to sale through the lifetime of the program.  How many properties were actually sold and returned to productive use? Sadly no analysis was ever conducted to assess this. To be fair, this program, which held the potential to revolutionize Code Enforcement, was sorely understaffed, underfunded, and suffered from inter-jurisdictional relationship friction between the Mayor and the Sheriff.
  5. Holding accountability meetings in public is a good idea, yet this transparency component created its own odd pressures to create good solid press coverage, even if the outcomes were less than ideal. Demolition of blighted structures is the most straightforward route, and this was the avenue most often employed by the City. More importantly, the pressure to maintain good publicity around the blight program made it extremely difficult to investigate publicly-funded programs where things had gone awry (aka the failure to salvage and relocate houses condemned to make way for the biomedical district).
  6. The punitive application of Code Enforcement liens was never balanced with ameliorative assistance to encourage residents to restore their housing. The influence of this “no carrot but stick” accelerated displacement of residents in neighborhoods that were disadvantaged through meager Road Home grants due to inaccurate pre-storm assessments.
  7. Code Enforcement action was exercised primarily upon private citizen land-owners.  Large institutional organizations and commercial investors (think Archdiocese, State of Louisiana, Orleans Parish School Board, HANO, Mall holding corporations) never saw equivalent enforcement action, despite being owners of some of the most obvious & significant blighted structures along main traffic corridors.
  8. The City was never able to find a vehicle to salvage significant “non-architectural” components of demolished housing stock due to restrictive FEMA regulations and the procurement cost-model of private contractors.
  9. If you walk through any streets of New Orleans, there is still ample blight staring you in the face (attached photo is a house that stood vacant for 9 years before burning earlier this year. A posted notice stated it is slated for emergency demolition on 3/5/14, photo taken on 4/8/14).

All in all, this is a cautionary tale. Yes, New Orleans is on the path to recovery, but it certainly deserves closer investigation as to how well we have governed ourselves towards that outcome.

 

 

New Orleans’ Winning Strategy in the War on Blight

A city with one of the nation’s worst blight problems is now considered a national leader in reducing vacant and dilapidated properties.
by Charles Chieppo | March 18, 2014

Few urban problems are more insidious than blight. Vacant or dilapidated properties suppress property values, threaten public safety, chase away investment and hurt quality of life.

Blight was a challenge for New Orleans even before Hurricane Katrina flooded nearly 80 percent of the city’s housing stock in 2005. By 2010, New Orleans had perhaps the country’s worst blight problem, affecting an estimated 43,755 properties — nearly one-quarter of the city’s residential addresses.

So it might be something of a surprise that the city now is considered a national model for blight reduction. What might be even more surprising is how that turnaround has been accomplished in little more than three years.

What wasn’t surprising at all was that blight was a big issue in the 2010 mayoral race. The winner of that contest, Mitch Landrieu, had promised to reduce the number of blighted properties by 10,000 by 2014.

Landrieu quickly went to work, strengthening the city’s enforcement powers, streamlining the process for remediating blighted properties and implementing a new computerized system to track code enforcement and permitting.

A blighted home on Verna Street.   photo by Charlie London
A blighted home on Verna Street. photo by Charlie London

The new blight remediation process begins with property inspection. It then moves to a hearing in which the property owner is either found guilty or in compliance. If guilty, the owner must remediate the problem or the property is either demolished or goes to a sheriff’s sale, which allows for a clean transfer of ownership.

Elected officials are generally reticent to take people’s property, but the old approach just wasn’t working. “Before, owners of blighted properties just ignored city fines, and peer pressure didn’t change their behavior,” said Deputy Mayor and Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin. “But once they know you’ll seize their property, they get religion.”

To coordinate the blight-reduction efforts of various city agencies, the Landrieu administration created BlightSTAT, a process in which representatives from the Department of Code Enforcement, the Office of Community Development, the Office of Information Technology and Innovation, the Law Department and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority meet to set goals and report on progress. The city’s Office of Performance and Accountability acts as an ombudsman, presenting data and holding the agencies’ feet to the fire.

But no one does a better job of holding feet to the fire than New Orleans’ residents. The BlightSTAT meetings are open to the public, some have drawn over 100 attendees and each concludes with a question-and-answer period. (For two years after the first meeting in November 2010, the meetings were held twice a month; now that the initial surge of dilapidated properties has been addressed, they’re held monthly.) Residents can also find out the status of specific properties on a “BlightStatus” website.

Feedback from residents and the New Orleans police department is used to set priorities among the dilapidated properties. BlightSTAT prioritizes properties whose remediation can stabilize a neighborhood as well as those in high-crime areas and major commercial corridors. Blight remediation is also the top priority when federal assistance is made available.

By early this year, Mayor Landrieu had more than made good on his promise, reducing the number of blighted residential properties by about 13,000. The average time from initial inspection to hearing has been cut in half, and one of the nation’s former blight leaders is now reducing it faster than any other American city.

Just as blight threatens public safety and harms quality of life, eliminating it creates a virtuous circle. BlightSTAT can’t claim sole credit for an extended real-estate boom in New Orleans or for the new confidence investors are demonstrating in the city, but it’s hard to imagine that New Orleans’ comeback would be nearly as robust without it.

http://www.governing.com/blogs/bfc/col-new-orleans-blightstat-vacant-dilapidated-property.html

 

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

February 24, 2014 by Charlie London

courtesy the Urban Conservancy
What’s Wrong with This Picture?  A Public Forum on Yard Paving
wrongExcessive paving in the required front and corner lot side yard areas, as well as public green spaces between sidewalk and street, is a growing concern in New Orleans. It can negatively impact property values, public safety and area drainage systems. The Urban Conservancy invites you to learn more about why excessive paving is occurring, what you can do about it, and mitigation techniques available to property owners. 
Please join us Thursday, March 13, from 5:30 – 7 pm at the Propeller Incubator, 4035 Washington Ave. for a discussion of this topic.

Kimberlye Hunicke, Licensed LA REALTOR, Urban Vision Properties LLC. Green Committee Chair, New Orleans Metropolitan Association of REALTORS® (NOMAR)

Ramiro Diaz, Architectural Designer, Waggonner & Ball Architects
Jeff Supak, Wetlands Coordinator, Global Green
Travis Martin, Urban Conservancy Intern, Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning Candidate, University of New Orleans
For more information, call or email Dana Eness at 504-232-7821 or [email protected]
UC Takes “Pave-o-Mania” to the Airwaves
On Feb. 15, Dana Eness and Kevin Fitzwilliam co-hosted the Urban Conservancy “All Things Local” radio show on WGSO 990AM with guests Ramiro Diaz, Kimberlye Hunicke, and Travis Martin to discuss negative impacts of excessive paving occurring on residential lots throughout New Orleans.  You can read Travis’ editorial in The Lens on the subject and listen to the podcast here.  Be sure to join us at the public forum on March 13 (see above) to learn more.

 

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Featured Tagged With: blight, New Orleans, yard paving

CITY AUCTION PRODUCES MIXED RESULTS

May 17, 2013 by Charlie London

$368,000 for 200 North Alexander to bidder #5. A well-known Faubourg St. John resident who lives on the bayou and a man from Chicago were rumored to be the back-n-forth bidders.

$280,000 for the Laurel Street Firehouse by bidder #21.

No bids were received for the other 4 properties in today’s City auction.

2552stPhilip-300x240

Buy this May 17th (TODAY)
2552 St. Philip

article courtesy City Business
Six city properties will be sold at auction next week, with officials looking to put unused real estate back into commerce.

Four former fire stations, a former police station and a visitor’s center are included in the auction set for 10 a.m. May 17 at City Council chambers, 1300 Perdido St.

Registration for bidders begins at 9 a.m.

An open house for all the properties will be held from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday. Interested parties must bring valid ID and sign a “hold harmless” agreement with the city.

The fire stations on the auction block include 4877 Laurel St., 200 N. Alexander St., 6038 St. Claude Ave. and 7311 Chef Menteur Highway. The police station is at 2552 St. Philip St., and the community center is at 7450 Paris Road.

The city said in a release that it has determined the properties are no longer needed for public purposes. All properties are vacant and in poor condition. Most suffered damage during Hurricane Katrina and have been declared blighted properties.

The city’s Home Rule Charter requires the properties be sold at public auction. The purchaser will be required to rehabilitate the property in a timely manner, taking into account any historic elements.

Winning bidders must deposit 10 percent of the winning bid amount with the city’s Real Estate and Records Division within one hour of the auction’s completion. The deposit must be in cash, certified check or money order and is non-refundable. Additional costs over the winning bid must be paid to complete the sale, including appraisal, clerk of court costs, city notary fees and possible resubdivision fees.

Upon purchase of the property, the new owner must clean and repair the property within 60 days. A certificate of occupancy from the Department of Safety and Permits must be received within 18 months.

To learn more about the properties being auctioned off, click here.

Reporter Robin Shannon can be reached at [email protected]

Former fire, police stations up for auction

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Featured Tagged With: 2552 St. Philip, bayou, bayou st john, best neighborhood in New Orleans, faubourg st john, historic, historic building for sale, New Orleans, new orleans best neighborhood, old police and jail, police station, preservation

BlightStat Revisited

April 11, 2013 by Charlie London

by Charlie London
blightstat-revisited
I took a new job about six months ago that no longer allows me to attend the BlightStat meetings on a regular basis as I once did. It was great to see the movers-and-shakers again today that keep fighting blight in our city.

The folks pictured above are the unsung heroes that, like you,
are passionate about moving New Orleans forward.

The Code Enforcement Department continues to lead the pack with over 1,000 inspections each month. The new land asset management application is far superior to the old computer system. The Code Enforcement Department was heralded for their continued vigilance in the fight against blight.

The Technology Department noted that while the virtual private network used by the inspectors is not providing the service expected, one of the features negotiated for the current technology contract allows for unlimited technical support. The problem is being worked on as you read this.

If you haven’t taken the time to check out data.nola.gov … you should. Surf around data.nola.gov and you’ll be amazed at the information you’ll find. The City of New Orleans Technology Department is working hard to dispel any misconceptions that New Orleans might be behind the times.

The Law Department also uses the land management asset application.

new-lot-next-door

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has a new lot next door program which will be released soon. Expect a press release from the City soon! NORA will be using online expressions of interest in properties for the new lot next door program. Those expressions of interest will be collected this May through August. The program will soon be available at NORAWORKS.org Properties will be sold at market value from September through December of this year.

The BlightStat team continues raise expectations and lead the nation in an idea that was developed right here in New Orleans. The results of their efforts will be felt for generations to come as New Orleans rises once again to become the “Queen of the South”.

Keep the faith… you’ll see.

***
April 12, 2013

NORA releases list of properties for expanded Lot Next Door Program

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) in partnership with the Mayor’s Office and City Council is pleased to announce the release of the list of properties for the amended Lot Next Door Ordinance. The City Council adopted Ordinance 29,397 on February 21 and the Mayor signed it into law on February 25, 2013.

Beginning today, NORA will publish the list of available properties in The Times-Picayune. The list is also available on NORA’s website www.noraworks.org and at data.nola.gov, the City’s official data catalog.

Eligible Lot Next Door buyers MUST notify NORA of its intent to purchase a Lot Next Door property by completing an Expression of Interest (EOI) form. The EOI form will be available on NORA’s website www.noraworks.org beginning May 1, 2013 until August 1, 2013. The deadline to complete an expression of interest (EOI) form is August 1, 2013. Submitting an expression of interest does not guarantee a purchase.

In order to be considered for the Lot Next Door Program you must share a common boundary to an eligible Lot Next Door Property and meet all other eligibility requirements. For more information regarding qualifications and eligibility please visit NORA’s website www.noraworks.org and click on the Lot Next Door tab or contact the Lot Next Door Program Office at 504.658.4422.

***

The New Orleans City Council voted Thursday to authorize demolition of several dozen blighted and dilapidated buildings throughout the city owned by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. The list includes properties in all five council districts.

HANO had requested permission to demolish all the buildings.

Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell originally filed a motion to allow demolition of several properties in District D, but other members then asked to add HANO properties in their districts as well — “hitching our wagons to yours,” as council President Stacy Head told Hedge-Morrell.

The final list comprises:

District A: 1715, 1723, 1727 and 1735 Cambronne St.; 1738-40 Gen. Ogden St.; 2115-17 St. Ann St.; and 8718-20 Willow St.

District B: 2331-33 Annunciation St.; 1421-23-25 and 5312 Constance St.; and 2118-20-22 Danneel St.

District C: 1815-21 Ptolemy St.; 1500-14, 1508-14, 1524-30 and 1532-38 Hendee St.; 1814-20 Lawrence St.; 717 De Armas St.; 2427 Ursulines Ave.; 1916 Roman St.; 1927 Mandeville St.; 2522 N. Rampart St.; 1814-20 Bayou Road; 2023 N. Robertson St.; 1319 Montegut St.; 600, 601, 615, 616-20 and 621 France St.; 4100-14 and 4200 Royal St.; 1112 N. Rocheblave St.; and 4319 Chartres St.

District D: 2500, 2501, 2524, 2525, 2600, 2601, 2624 and 2625 Bartholomew St.; 2123-29 Painters St.; and 3013 Mandeville St.

District E: 1501-03, 1505-07, 1509-11 and 1515 Benton St. and 4727 Ray Ave.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/04/city_council_approves_demoliti.html#incart_river

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings Tagged With: best, BlightStat, city, city of new orleans, demolish, demolition, fight blight right, New Orleans, program, queen of the south

Construction Celebration

March 2, 2013 by Charlie London

https://fsjna.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Esplanade+Bike+Path+Study1a.pdf

Paths2Progress4webclick on the announcement for a larger view

Tuesday | March 5th

Meet under the big dome on the bayou –> Holy Rosary cafeteria at
3368 Moss Street in beautiful Faubourg St. John

***

Orleans_Ave_Paving_Begins

Barriere Construction Company will begin the Esplanade repaving project on March 6th. One lane of traffic will remain open on each side of Esplanade during the project.

Esplanade-Paving-March6
Dean Burridge sent in this report on January 12, 2013:

The $5M project has been coordinated with the Sewer & Water Board along with area utilities, and completion by July 2013 is anticipated.

ADA curb ramps will be the items that will be the first construction to begin. A new 2″ surface of asphalt will be installed after removing of the previous material, along with curb repair. The stone curb will remain and be reset as deemed necessary.

Seven day notice will be given to area businesses and residents prior to the initiation of road work and the work will be generally continuous from 7am to 5:30pm. Some occasional evening & weekend repairs are possible. If you have any questions they may be reached at 1-800-574-7193.

One lane will remain open during construction work. Esplanade Avenue will become a one vehicle travel lane in each direction. The lane will be widened to 12′ and it is the city’s intention to have an accompanying bike lane with accompanying striping. The bike lane striping will be done later.

The Rail Road track and subsequent bump on City Park Avenue will remain. Several crosswalks at area schools, along with those in “downtown” Faubourg St. John will be done in a “bold” pattern style. None of the area parks will be utilized for construction material or devices.

https://fsjna.org/2013/01/esplanade-and-city-park-avenue-repaving/


***
Paving announced July 23, 2012:

https://fsjna.org/2012/07/esplanade-to-get-upgrade-in-december/


***
Request for comments November 3, 2011:

https://fsjna.org/2011/11/comments-due-on-esplanade-repaving/


***
Paving announced October 12, 2011:

https://fsjna.org/2011/10/esplanade-avenue-to-be-repaved/


***

The article below is by Kate Parker, former Faubourg St.John Neighborhood Association president:

The infrastructure improvements for Esplanade are not a surprise to this neighborhood. Indeed, they were discussed in 2006, 2007 and 2008 at several planning meetings. They are located within the bike master plan for the city. It is possible that not everyone here attended every meeting or was involved in every discussion. But, as a former neighborhood president, I was. And I
encouraged it, and I was not alone.

Road diets on streets with sub-standard travel lanes in a places with a high residential and business mix make sense for safety and economic development.

Crash rates between cars decrease (see FHWA report http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/04082/index.cfm) as cars cross fewer lanes of traffic to turn minimizing the potential for conflicts.

Furthermore, the safety of pedestrians increases. Pedestrians do not have to cross as many lanes of traffic to reach their destination. We have many new families with young children in this neighborhood. We have elderly citizens who require extra time to cross streets. Let’s try to envision a neighborhood that keeps our kids and their grandparents safe.

Our neighborhood businesses cannot survive on the business of the small group of people who live in the Faubourg St. John alone. People visit Faubourg St.John from all over the city not only at Jazz Fest, but at other times of the year. There are at least three businesses that rent bikes to tourists downtown. The tourists (and our own residents) require a safe way to travel from the French Quarter to City Park. City Park is adding infrastructure for people to be active and enjoy the park. It is absurd that we would want them to drive to the park to be active.
People should be able to walk and bike there safely.

Finally, there will be an increase in cyclists and also in pedestrians. I have completed two studies in peer-reviewed journals of the impact of bike lanes in New Orleans on cycling. Both the St. Claude lane and the S. Carrollton lanes led to an increase in cyclists. (Parker et al, JPAH, 2011, & Parker et al, Annuals of Behavioral Medicine 2013). A third study I am finishing details that after the new improvements on S. Carrollton there was an increase in pedestrians too. Considering the needs of our businesses to attract customers, I think that new bike and pedestrian traffic helps them significantly. Moreover, the new comprehensive zoning ordinance has features that encourage business to include parking for bikes. Our city is moving to become more inclusive of all users of the roadways, as evidenced by the passage of the 2011 Complete Streets Ordinance.

New Orleans is a flat city in a temperate climate, well-suited to walking and biking.

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Zoning Issues Tagged With: bayou, bayou st john, best, best neighborhood in New Orleans, construction, eclectic, esplanade, faubourg st john, kate parker, neighborhood, New Orleans, paving

Relentless Bandit

November 30, 2012 by Charlie London

Have you seen those Discount Tree Cutting signs? Those plywood signs that are 4 feet by 4 feet in size posted about 15-20 feet high on utility poles throughout the city? These signs have been diligently removed by citizens but this sign bandit continues to post them throughout the city despite warnings from officials. Many of the signs get put right back up where they were taken down.

It is against the law
to post signs like this.

The signs you see below and those signs you see stuck in the ground on city property and posted on utility poles throughout New Orleans are illegal and unnecessary. There are unused billboards throughout the city that could be used for advertising.

Read more about bandit signs in the link below:
https://fsjna.org/2011/08/city-to-bust-sign-bandits/

UPDATE DECEMBER 3rd

Many thanks to Ann MacDonald and the workers at Parks and Parkways who immediately took action on
some of the signs posted here Nov. 30th.

The complaint went out last Friday and 4 of the signs disappeared right away. There are still several of this sign bandit’s work around (see below) but Parks and Parkways is to be commended for their quick action.

Hopefully, the rest of these large signs will be removed soon!

Citizens have previously removed this sign at the busy intersection of Earhart and Claiborne yet this relentless bandit continues to put them up despite warnings from the city.

Are you tired of this nonsense? Then click on the link below and contact your city councilpeople. This bandit crosses council district lines.
http://nolacitycouncil.com/meet/meet.asp

This sign on Claiborne Avenue at Martin Luther King Blvd. was previously removed by citizens yet it continues to be replaced by this relentless sign bandit.

Are you tired of this nonsense? Then click on the link below and contact your city councilpeople. This bandit crosses council district lines.
http://nolacitycouncil.com/meet/meet.asp

This sign on Earhart at the entrance to the Broad Street overpass has been removed by citizens previously yet the sign is up again. The city has warned this bandit.
What’s it going to take for this to stop?

Are you tired of this nonsense? Then click on the link below and contact your city councilpeople. This bandit crosses council district lines.
http://nolacitycouncil.com/meet/meet.asp

Citizens have removed this sign from this exact same spot previously.
This relentless bandit has put up a new one.

The City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways removed this sign.


Citizens previously removed this sign in the middle of St. Bernard Avenue.
As you can see, it is up once again.

The City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways removed this sign.


This sign bandit is a creature of habit. Citizens have previously removed this sign from this location. You can see it is up once again right in front of Mossy Motors at 1331 South Broad.

The City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways removed this sign.


This sign bandit is a creature of habit. Citizens have previously removed this sign from this location. You can see it is up once again just steps from Liberty’s Kitchen at 422 South Broad.

The City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways removed this sign.

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Featured Tagged With: bandit signs, bayou st john, best, blight, city, eclectic, faubourg st john, illegal, nasty, neighborhood, New Orleans, pollution, signs

Be a Blight Czar

November 30, 2012 by Charlie London

You can be the “Blight Czar”
for your neighborhood right at your computer.


Go to http://blightstatus.nola.gov and enter the name of any street in your area to see what’s been done about that blighted house down the block.

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Maybe it wasn’t reported yet.
Click here –> http://blightstatus.nola.gov/pages/help
and
here –> https://fsjna.org/links/steps-to-stomp-out-blight/ to find out what to do.

DON’T BE “THAT GUY”
Lots of folks say they don’t have time. Someone else will do it. Well, those “someone elses” also have jobs, kids and are pressed for time. It’s up to YOU to take action to make your neighborhood better. Don’t be “that guy” that says he’s too busy.

People love to say, “there isn’t much blight in Faubourg St. John”. Why do you think that is? It’s not just because it is a great place to live and most folks are proud to live here, blight is reported and followed-up until it is gone.

Below are some examples of what you’ll find if you search at http://blightstatus.nola.gov You won’t just find the maps below but links on the addressess on the maps where you can click to find out more information. The arrows on the map are not the exact location but the general area. When you visit http://blightstatus.nola.gov and enter in a street, you will get exact addresses to click on for more information.

Check out the number of blighted property reports in Faubourg St. John on St. Ann Street alone!
2713 st ann street
2717 st ann street
2722 st ann street
2723 st ann street
2726 st ann street
2730 st ann street
2741 st ann street
2743 st ann street
2746 st ann street
2750 st ann street
2751 st ann street
2753 st ann street
2754 st ann street
2755 st ann street
2800 st ann street
2801 st ann street
2804 st ann street
2809 st ann street
2816 st ann street
2821 st ann street
2824 st ann street
2832 st ann street
2912 st ann street
2920 st ann street
2921 st ann street
2931 st ann street
2936 st ann street
3007 st ann street
3009 st ann street
3027 st ann street
3030 st ann street
3034 st ann street
3035 st ann street
3038 st ann street
3042 st ann street
3053 st ann street
3062 st ann street
3108 st ann street
3110 st ann street
3118 st ann street
3205 st ann street
3219 st ann street
3229 st ann street
3303 st ann street

Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings, Featured Tagged With: bayou st john, best, blight, czar, eclectic, faubourg st john, fight, neighborhood, New Orleans

BlightStatus Arrives

October 11, 2012 by Charlie London

Click here to view the City’s presentation at today’s BlightStat meeting.
<a href="http://blightstatus.nola.gov/">MAYOR LANDRIEU, CODE FOR AMERICA TO UNVEIL NEW TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK BLIGHTED PROPERTIES</a>

If you are having trouble viewing this message, read this in your browser.

MAYOR LANDRIEU, CODE FOR AMERICA TO UNVEIL NEW TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK BLIGHTED PROPERTIES

NEW ORLEANS, LA—October 11, 2012 | Today, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Code for America (CFA) will announce the launch of BlightStatus, a new interactive tool for residents to track the progress of blighted properties within the code Enforcement system in New Orleans.

Nearly two years ago, Mayor Landrieu announced a new, aggressive blight strategy aimed at reducing the blight count in New Orleans by 10,000 properties by 2014. A recent study released by The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center showed that blighted properties have been reduced by approximately 8,000 addresses since 2010. The study attributed the reduction in part to the focused efforts of City agencies to bring properties into compliance.

Neighborhood groups and engaged citizens have always been a crucial partner in the city’s fight against blight, and now, with the launch of BlightStatus, they will have access to previously inaccessible City data about the status of blighted properties. Easy access to this information will reduce barriers to participation in public blight hearings, and improve the quality of the interactions between the City and the community in the common goal of blight eradication.

WHO: Mayor Mitch Landrieu
Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin
City officials
Code for America team

WHAT: Launch of BlightStatus, a new interactive tool for residents to track the progress of blighted
properties within the Code Enforcement system in New Orleans

WHEN: Thursday, October 11, 2012
1:00 PM

WHERE: 1708 St. Roch Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70117

###

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Follow the Mayor:




    BlightSTATUS makes it simple for residents to find out what’s going on with blighted properties in their community – no long waits on the telephone or visits to City Hall required.
    A great example of government transparency at work, BlightSTATUS pulls up-to-date property information directly from the City’s official records, providing a single, comprehensive and authoritiative view to the public for the very first time.









    Write to [email protected] for more information.





    http://blightstatus.nola.gov/

    For decades residents have asked for easy access to information on the status of blighted buildings, and now we’re delivering. BlightStatus is a new interactive online tool for residents to track the progress of blighted properties within the Code Enforcement system in New Orleans.

    Anyone with an Internet connection can visit http://blightstatus.nola.gov to:

    •search for any property to view its case history in a clear and simple format;
    •create a “watchlist” to track the progress of multiple properties;
    •receive email alerts whenever a property on your “watchlist” moves forward in the blight process;
    •analyze blight citywide or down to the block level using interactive maps and charts; and
    •learn more about the blight process itself at the Help Center
    Reducing blight citywide is a top priority of my administration. Blight threatens our safety, the value of our homes, our quality of life and our environment. Nearly two years ago, we announced a new, aggressive blight strategy aimed at reducing the blight count in New Orleans by 10,000 properties by 2014. A recent study released by The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center showed that blighted properties have been reduced by approximately 8,000 addresses since 2010. The study attributed the reduction in part to the focused efforts of City agencies to bring properties into compliance by prioritizing aggressive code enforcement and code lien foreclosure sales.

    Recently, the City’s blight strategy was named a 2012 Bright Idea in Government by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and was awarded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary’s Award at the 2012 Council on Philanthropy Conference for its public-philanthropic partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF), the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) and the Center for Community Progress (CCP).

    This is a major step forward in reducing barriers to public participation in blight hearings, and improving the quality of the interactions between the City and the community in the common goal of eliminating blight.

    Sincerely,
    Mitchell J. Landrieu
    Mayor
    City of New Orleans

    Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings Tagged With: bayou, bayou st john, best, blight, city, eclectic, faubourg, faubourg st john, fight, landrieu, neighborhood, New Orleans, news

    BlightStat Gets National Recognition

    September 26, 2012 by Charlie London

    NEW ORLEANS, LA — Today, the City of New Orleans announced that its Blight Reduction Strategy has been named a 2012 Bright Idea in Government by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. The Bright Ideas initiative is designed to recognize and promote creative government initiatives and partnerships and create an online community where innovative ideas can be proposed, shared, and disseminated.

    “We are thrilled that our aggressive blight reduction strategy is being recognized on a national stage,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu.  “When I came into office, I knew we needed a better way to track data on blight progress to ensure we were actually achieving results.  BlightStat is one way we’re making that happen.  And this award is an acknowledgement that the work is paying off.”

    Nearly two years ago, Mayor Landrieu announced a new, aggressive blight strategy aimed at reducing the blight count in New Orleans by 10,000 properties by 2014. A recent study released by The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center showed that blighted properties have been reduced by by approximately 8,000 addresses since 2010. The study attributed the reduction in part to the focused efforts of City agencies to bring properties into compliance.

    The City’s Blight Reduction Strategy aims to significantly reduce blighted properties by prioritizing aggressive code enforcement and code lien foreclosure sales. The BlightStat public performance management system aggressively manages and tracks the benchmarks outlined in the strategy. In these public meetings, senior staff meets with front-line department heads and program managers to discuss progress in meeting goals through the analysis of performance metrics. These are working meetings, intended to provoke constructive dialogue on what’s working, what’s not, and what the various City departments and agencies need to do to improve.

    “This is a strategy that only works with a dedicated staff and ongoing community partnerships,” said First Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin. “I want to congratulate and thank Jeff Hebert, Oliver Wise and the whole team who are out on the front line fighting blight in this city every day.”

    Additionally, the City’s Blight Reduction Strategy was awarded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary’s Award at the 2012 Council on Philanthropy Conference for its public-philanthropic partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF), the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) and the Center for Community Progress (CCP).  Through this partnership, New Orleans is developing a national model for dealing with blight. Cities from across Louisiana and the country are working to replicate the success of New Orleans.

    Jeff Hebert, Executive Director, New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and Oliver Wise, Director, Office of Performance and Accountability, City of New Orleans are 2012 recipients of the Innovation Award from the Bureau of Governmental Research. The Innovation Award recognizes employees who have used innovative solutions to solve pressing problems.

    The BlightStat program, along with QualityofLifeStat, ReqtoCheckStat and BottomlineStat are examples of Mayor Landrieu’s commitment to accountability, transparency, and data-driven management. Coupled with the quarterly ResultsNOLA report cards for City departments’ key performance indicators, the Landrieu administration is implementing performance management initiatives designed to improve results to citizens.

    To learn more, visit the website of the Office of Performance and Accountability, the team created by Mayor Landrieu to implement a performance management system in City Hall: www.nola.gov/opa.   

    Link to full Bright Ideas Program Descriptions:
    http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/News-Events/Press-Releases/Innovations/Harvard-Announces-111-Bright-Ideas-in-Government/2012-Bright-Ideas

    Filed Under: BlightStat Meetings Tagged With: blight, BlightStat, harvard

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