Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 50) and crime, but these plague any urban area of 80,000 people (if not usually such new ones), and reflected problems in New Orleans as a whole. Although it contains a variety of economic groups, the East, at its most successful, in neighborhoods such as Eastover, represents the best of middle- and upper-income America with its share of manicured lawns, swimming pools and mansions. Most of New Orleans East, on the other hand, never came close to the city-within-a-city it was supposed to be, but in its own way showed adjustment to changing times — for example, successfully incorporating a substantial proportion of the city’s Vietnamese population. If the East represents anything, it is the risks inherent in the Crescent City’s 20th-century dream of building houses on top of subsiding wetlands. This was Celebrating the wealth of community As d was mucky lan cultivation the t put into ined and act like a dried-ou dra nward o comp it began t the level went dow ea s d sponge an ch as 8-feet below to as mu in the 1970s. level not just the practice in the East, but in Gentilly and Lakeview — New Orleans’ other big 20th-century dreams. All ended up equally at the mercy of nature’s fury, shoddy man-made levees and man-made canals. These waterways channeled water through city neighborhoods when Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge drowned New Orleans 20th-century dreams of expansion and modern houses. It is fortunate that environmentalists finally convinced city officials and planners of the dangers of eroding wetlands — at least before it was too late and 250,000 people lived east of Paris Road. LCV John Magill is Historian/Curator of the Historic New Orleans Collection. His article “A Conspiracy of Complicity,” published in the Fall 2006 edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas, was awarded first place for feature writing by the New Orleans Press Club. Visit www.imaginelouisiana.com Call 225.201.0222 Subscribe today! 50 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008 http://www.imaginelouisiana.com
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