Community-Based Rebuilding Invigorates NOLA

You might think that what's needed to rebuild flood-ravaged New Orleans is a few big contractors that can come in with their truckloads of power tools to kick a** and take names. Huge tracts of the city are demolished, so bring in the huge companies to prop it all back up again, and fast.

But when you think about it, big companies washing over the city might compare to the effects of a storm — large, impersonal forces careening across locals' lives with no regard to their feelings or true needs. One force tears down, the other puts up, but neither give a darn about those whose neighborhoods they are transforming.

Community groups thought otherwise, and got to work helping local businesses and others with vested interests get their nail guns into the mix. Anisa Baldwin Metzger of the Worldchanging Blog reports that "the community of small players that has risen out of the recovery process is not only making residents and local business-owners feel more like a part of the rebuilding process but is also allowing support and room for growth within the building industry in a way that would not be possible in a larger-scale operation."

Brad Pitt's organization, Make It Right Foundation, is a good example of this new trend. The foundation aims to be "a catalyst for redevelopment of the Lower 9th Ward, by building a neighborhood comprised of safe and healthy homes that are inspired by cradle-to-cradle thinking." The organization was dismayed that most of the subcontractors bidding on its construction projects were companies from out of state, which pointed to a lack of capacity in the local field. Make it Right determined to change that by choosing local partners, allowing subcontractors to learn as they go and offering them training in new green-building skills.

Partnerships among groups have been vital to the energy of local rebuilding efforts. Make It Right, for example, partners with groups like the Good Work Network, which supports low-income "micro entrepreneurs," to provide professional development and technical training.

This storm, so to speak, of homespun reconstruction is laying a good foundation that can be applied to rebuilding efforts in other scenarios. As Metzger writes, "Hundreds of organizations are trying to come up with effective solutions that will not only work for New Orleans but will also provide templates for whatever may be the next international disaster."

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng