APA's New Orleans Team Rebuilding Report

A special volunteer six-member team of planners assembled by APA visited New Orleans October 23 to October 28 to assess the city's needs for developing and implementing plans to guide redevelopment in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans City Planning Commission and the Louisiana APA Chapter requested this assistance.

During the visit, the team meet with several governmental and community groups to map the next steps in the rebuilding and planning process. Local APA members, including the commission's chair Tim Jackson, AICP, were instrumental in aiding the team's understanding of the local planning environment.

The team has put its findings and recommendations into a report, "Charting the Course for Rebuilding a Great American City." The report includes short-and long-term recommendations for improving the city's planning functions to expedite the rebuilding processes. The report identifies the most pressing need is for additional planning staff resources.

Click here to download a copy of the team's report

"Now is the time to strengthen the city's planning function while national interest and support are available," said Fernando Costa, AICP, the volunteer planning team leader. "The urgency to rebuild will create pressures to disregard important planning policies. We must balance the urgency to rebuild with informed decisions, relying on planning professional, so the same environmental and building errors will not happen again."

"We were pleased to be able to offer assistance to the New Orleans City Planning Commission and our Louisiana Chapter," said Paul Farmer, AICP, Executive Director and CEO of the American Planning Association. "A strong comprehensive planning capacity is needed now more than ever as this great city rebuilds."

The team's report will be used by other nongovernmental organizations also assisting in rebuilding the devastated Gulf Coast region.

The team included experts in planning, disaster mitigation and floodplain management. It was led by Fort Worth, Texas, Planning Director Fernando Costa, AICP. The American Planning Association, the APA Planning Foundation, and APA's City Planning and Management Division covered the team's expenses.

APA New Orleans Team Members

Fernando Costa, AICP, Fort Worth, Texas, has served as planning director for the City of Fort Worth since 1998. Before moving to Texas, he served for 11 years as planning director for the City of Atlanta, where he helped community leaders use the 1996 Olympic Games and a federal empowerment zone designation as catalysts for revitalizing Atlanta's central business district and surrounding lower-income neighborhoods. Costa currently chairs the development excellence steering committee for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which promotes sustainable development throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. He has served as a chapter president, City Planning and Management Division chair, accreditation board member, and JAPA editorial board member for APA. Costa received degrees in civil engineering and city planning from Georgia Tech, and served as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Jane S. Brooks, FAICP, New Orleans, chairs the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of New Orleans where she has been a faculty member since 1976. She established the Historic Preservation Planning concentration in this program, serves as its coordinator, and has been actively involved in community-based historic preservation activities in support of revitalizing diverse New Orleans neighborhoods. For many years she has been an active member of the Executive Committee of the Louisiana Chapter of APA and also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Planning Association. She has been involved in numerous research and profession practice activities centered on urban areas with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Foundation in such areas as waterfront revival, park planning, and downtown revitalization. A native of New Orleans, she holds degrees in landscape architecture from LSU and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Chandra Foreman, AICP, Lakeland, Florida, has recently served as Region III Commissioner of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She has experience in both academic fields and professional practice, serving as a researcher with the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research and most recently senior planner for permitting and development services for Lakeland, Florida. She prepared an important report for the Florida Department of Transportation outlining ways to provide better intermodal transportation service at the neighborhood level. With areas of specialization in transportation and environmental justice, Foreman holds a master's degree in planning from Florida State University.

Bob Lurcott, FAICP, Pittsburgh, developed one of the county's most respected big city planning departments as planning director in Pittsburgh from 1977-1989 and as deputy executive director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission before that. He is recognized for building cooperation and confidence among diverse, often conflicting, interests. His innovative work in capital programming, economic restructuring, and funding of community organizations has improved the livability of large older cities, particularly his adopted city, Pittsburgh. He has also extensively advised other cities including Oakland, California, on its vision for the future, and Minneapolis on the organization of its planning function. He received his Bachelor of Architecture and Master's in Regional Planning from Cornell University. Lurcott also served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and is past chair of APA's City Planning and Management Division.

Grover Mouton, New Orleans, directs the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center, Tulane University. Under the TRUDC he manages the Southern Regional Mayor's Institute on City Design, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 2000 he has worked in conjunction with APA on planning and urban design demonstration and training projects in China, including the cities of Nanjing, Tianjin, Zhenjiang, Shanghai and is currently working on the Nantong regional strategic plan. He has served on many design and planning competition juries including Chair of the Womens Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. His drawings have been exhibited widely around the world. He has a Master's of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; Bachelor's of Architecture from Tulane School of Architecture; and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome.

Richard Roths, AICP, Chicago, is a nationally recognized expert in floodplain management and mitigation planning. Currently Principal Planner for URS Corporation, he has also served as senior planner for FEMA Region V, where he coordinated mitigation planning activities for the region's six states. The lead instructor of mitigation planning courses and mitigation plan review courses for state and local agencies under FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Technical Assistance Program, Roths also has participated in the APA Illinois Chapter's pro bono committee. During the Midwest Floods of 1993, he served as the compliance officer for Illinois and prepared the "Standard Operating Procedure for Post-flood Compliance Operations" for the region. He was responsible for ensuring that flood damaged communities were rebuilt in a way that reduced flood risk in the future. He was senior planning officer for the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission providing technical assistance to county and municipal governments regarding the enforcement of local floodplain regulations, including both zoning and subdivision regulations. Roths has a bachelor's degree in education and a Master of Urban Planning Degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Image: From left: Fernando Costa, AICP, the team leader; Richard Roths, AICP; Chandra Foreman, AICP; Robert Lurcott, AICP; and Jane Brooks, FAICP. Marla Nelson, AICP, of the University of New Orleans (second from left), joined the team during the visit. Photo by William Borah.