RoR: Forum

Forum : Article Discussions : The Big Apple Versus the Big Easy: A Tale of Two Cities

Saturday
September 10, 2005

The Big Apple Versus the Big Easy: A Tale of Two Cities by Michael E. Marotta

The difference between New York City after 9/11 and New Orleans after Katrina is an undeniable contrast between a city that rose to the sky, because its people could not be held to the ground, and a city that wallowed in a swamp, as long as the red beans and rice were as cheap as music and bourbon. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (23 messages)

Post 20

Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 9:27pm

Bookmark

Link

Edit

"Jeff Riggenbach, like every city, new residents live in the suburbs. I know only New Orleans proper has like 400,000 residents but Meterie and surrounding areas have experienced like double digit growth in the last 10 years. Hell I say I'm from Lake Charles, LA but I actually live outside the city limits. Quit being technical, the hurricane didn't give a damn where the city limits were."

San Diego, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Phoenix, Houston, Las Vegas -- all these cities have experienced continuous growth over the past decades *within their city limits* as well as in the metropolitan area outside their borders. The fact that people are leaving New Orleans and that the only growth in the area is in the suburbs outside the city limits hardly shows that *New Orleans* was "doing something right."

JR

Post 21

Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 9:38pm

Bookmark

Link

Edit

New Orleans wasn't a planned city - it evolved to where it is and how it currently exists. Like it or not, it's important for the United States economy to have a major city there. For one thing, barge shipping on the Mississippi River system is often times still the most cost effective way to move massive payloads of agricultural (and other) products, and there has to be some place where those shipments can be converted onto large ocean bound vessels. New Orleans' location is no brainer for that. If nothing else, it at least shouldn't be a surprise that a city popped up where it did.

Post 22

Monday, March 20, 2006 - 5:26am

Bookmark

Link

Edit

Read about Cyclone Larry. "But despite leaving possibly thousands of people homeless there were no reports on Monday of serious injuries, reflecting the preparedness of residents in the storm-prone region."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/cyclone.larry/index.html

Now, Australia is hardly Galt's Gulch, but the society has many elements of individualism that obviously were lacking in New Orleans. For a typical comparison from other times and places, some sociologists constrast the Dominican Republic with Haiti -- they are on the same island, so you cannot argue geography. Arizona and New Mexico are likewise examples of two nearly identical places with disparate economies and one half (Arizona) is markedly more prosperous. The Czechs and the Slovaks today or old Czechoslovakia vs. Hungary when both were Iron Curtain. Of course, as the closet conservative, John Kennedy, commanded, if anyone thinks socialism actually works, "Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen!" So, the bottom line is that as flawed as Oz may be, their elements of individualism allowed them to survive a tropical storm half again as powerful as Katrina.

The liberal mass media and the academic collectivists who empower them would like to blame the Bush Administration for the mess in New Orleans. A more rational analysis would conclude that relying on the federal government to "do something" is never as effective as taking care of yourself -- which the people of Cairns and Innisfail apparently have done.