"I can't be whole in Houston"
[This was written on Oct. 10, 2005]
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes it's the other way around. "I can't be whole in Houston" said a relocated New Orleans woman on NPR. You've heard of "driveway moments," when you have to hear the end of the story - I almost had a drive-off-the-roadway moment when I heard this. Architects love to natter on about "a sense of place." Me, too. My interest in what is a neighborhood (and particularly, where they begin and end) leads me to ask, what happens to the sense of place when a hurricane (or earthquake) eliminates it? What happens to the sense of self when its emplacement is uprooted? Are neighborhood borders also defined by what's wiped out and what isn't?
The choice of words is, I think, important. It's eloquent. How is wholeness related to place? It's not a willful thing: I won't be whole in Houston. It's not about the continuity of the self: I can't be the same in Houston. Is it a comment about New Orleans in particular? Is that what differentiates a place like New Orleans from the "no place" that is Houston? Do people in Memphis feel the same way? In Denver? In Hearne?
Are people attached to New Orleans as a connection of neighborhoods, or does the character of one (or a few) neighborhoods (the French Quarter, Sixth Street in Austin, the historic downtown in Charleston) pervade, permeate, influence the rest of the city? Perhaps what characterizes a great city is that there is a bunch of great neighborhoods (think Paris, London, New York, San Francisco). If so, the losses from Katrina may be longer-lasting, and harder-to-calculate, than is currently apparent.
The cynic in me stirs: how much of this romantic notion of place is wishful thinking? By all accounts, New Orleans was horribly mismanaged, crime-riddled, and poor. How much of this mythologizing accounts for attachment to place? How do we get at this? Is it useful/proper/interesting to separate myth from place? Can we rebuild or restore place?
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes it's the other way around. "I can't be whole in Houston" said a relocated New Orleans woman on NPR. You've heard of "driveway moments," when you have to hear the end of the story - I almost had a drive-off-the-roadway moment when I heard this. Architects love to natter on about "a sense of place." Me, too. My interest in what is a neighborhood (and particularly, where they begin and end) leads me to ask, what happens to the sense of place when a hurricane (or earthquake) eliminates it? What happens to the sense of self when its emplacement is uprooted? Are neighborhood borders also defined by what's wiped out and what isn't?
The choice of words is, I think, important. It's eloquent. How is wholeness related to place? It's not a willful thing: I won't be whole in Houston. It's not about the continuity of the self: I can't be the same in Houston. Is it a comment about New Orleans in particular? Is that what differentiates a place like New Orleans from the "no place" that is Houston? Do people in Memphis feel the same way? In Denver? In Hearne?
Are people attached to New Orleans as a connection of neighborhoods, or does the character of one (or a few) neighborhoods (the French Quarter, Sixth Street in Austin, the historic downtown in Charleston) pervade, permeate, influence the rest of the city? Perhaps what characterizes a great city is that there is a bunch of great neighborhoods (think Paris, London, New York, San Francisco). If so, the losses from Katrina may be longer-lasting, and harder-to-calculate, than is currently apparent.
The cynic in me stirs: how much of this romantic notion of place is wishful thinking? By all accounts, New Orleans was horribly mismanaged, crime-riddled, and poor. How much of this mythologizing accounts for attachment to place? How do we get at this? Is it useful/proper/interesting to separate myth from place? Can we rebuild or restore place?