Planen ohne Risiko: New Orleans und der Wiederaufbau nach Katrina Planning Without Risk: New Orleans and the Reconstruction after Katrina

Abstract

This paper deals with ‘planning’ and ‘prevention’ as two logics or rationalities of recovery planning. A brief case study on recovery planning in New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina has shown how, in a situation of destruction, disorientation and uncertainty, recovery planning was intended to create the impression of a reliable framing for individual decision making on return and reconstruction. Here, planning appeared as pro-active design, with flood prevention as a necessary and centrally assessable element. However, in the course of time and within a number of successive planning processes, it was precisely the attempt to model New Orleans’ future on a centralized, expertise-driven approach of reconstruction that provoked strong criticism. Consequently, dynamics shifted from expertise-centered recovery planning to a more de-centralized mode that stressed citizen participation, ‘lay knowledge’ and inclusion, re-defined what New Orleans should look like in the future, as well as the role and the meaning of ‘(flood) prevention’.