There are two parts to this story. The first is reconstruction.
Story goes that 150 architects from around the world were invited (not sure really by who) to build 150 units with a modern take on the traditional Louisiana shotgun style house (living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, all in a single wide structure. I think they ended up doing exactly 150 total.
Hurricane Katrina blew out this wall:
This is where people were on roof tops and helicopters did rescues.
While everyone agrees that its wonderful these couple residents got new houses, very little of the total area was actually rebuilt. Like less than 10%. The second part of the story is demolition without construction. Mostly it all still looks like this:
We found a local market. Family run, clearly without bank support. The inventory had a collective worth of about $125. Not sure why we didn't shoot the inside, I remember buying some sandwich and then later realizing it had meat on it and also the inability to identify any. They said they were starting a market garden. I'm definitely into that, but not brazen enough to jump the fence and photograph it for real.
We continued on to the upper ninth ward. It may have been flooded, but it didn't get demolished. These people had very aggressive dogs and we could have used that as a preview to what we were about to see.
