Two ancient French cities. The first, founded by Cadillac in 1701; the second, founded by Bienville nearly seventeen years later. Both predate the republic by several generations. Detroit and New Orleans have followed vastly divergent paths in the three centuries since their founding, but there are some interesting parallels between the two.

The St. Charles Streetcar is back in service.

Both cities are a little ragged by time, studded with faded remnants of a more prosperous era. Both cities face struggles for new employment generators. Both have suffered cataclysmic devastation of urban fabric, and a precipitous population loss. Both have fabulous renovated buildings casually intermixed with brooding ruins. And both Detroit and New Orleans have some of the most creative and passionate residents in America; determined to maintain an urban lifestyle unique to themselves.

Magazine Street shops

I’m presenting an album of New Orleans photos today, as a way to catch up with my readers and as a mea culpa for my long absence. I was married last month, and that combined with our honeymoon in the Crescent City somehow pulled me away from my blogging duties. You understand.

We were in town for the freak snowstorm.

So what’s going on in New Orleans these days? A lot; in fact the oldest historic neighborhoods have largely recovered from the aftermath of Katrina. I learned that this is because, before the flood “protection” installed in the early twentieth century, residential construction occurred only on natural levees and ridges. In the deltaic floodplain of the lower Mississippi, the highest ground is actually closest to the river. Here’s where we find the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, and Esplanade Avenue; and the Warehouse District, Lower Magazine Street, and the Garden District.

Which isn’t to say that the city doesn’t have a lot of work to do. New Orleans’ biggest employer, the tourism industry, was heavily damaged by the bad publicity after the hurricane. We were received like royalty at every shop or cafe we visited (not that this is all that different than my recollection of pre-storm hospitality!).

Restoration work on Esplanade mansion.

We found this month to be a good moment for a relaxing New Orleans getaway, before the intensity of Mardi Gras takes over much of the city in February. New Orleans is currently hosting a terrific contemporary arts exhibition titled Prospect.1, which has been running since November and will wind down on Sunday, January 18th. Featured in the New York Times, this exhibition is housed in high profile settings like the Contemporary Arts Center, as well as abandoned structures and fields in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Contemporary Arts Center, Interior view.

The ‘orange house’, part of the Prospect.1 city-wide exhibition.

Site of levee break, and a stop on the Prospect.1 exhibition. Lower Ninth Ward.

The organizers have prepared an outstanding wayfinding map, and there is a reliable shuttle service connecting all the Prospect.1 venues.

The Lower Ninth Ward, or is it a west-side Detroit street view?

I also made time for a visit to the Preservation Resource Center on Tchoupitoulas Street.

Preservation Resource Center.

The PRC is a strong voice for presentation and sustainable urban living in New Orleans, and has been a critical player in the many post-hurricane debates concerning damaged historic buildings.

A tattered blue roof tarp, a symbol of post-Katrina New Orleans, survives on this shotgun.

With more than a dozen staff members, a permanent exhibition and shop space, and a thick monthly magazine, they are a first-class, professional preservation organization. Since I’m sure all of my readers are already members of Preservation Wayne, I would encourage you to support PRC as well.

A spray-painted Katrina marker left as a remembrance on this restored mansion.

There is no reason Detroit can’t take inspiration from what’s going on in New Orleans; the rebounding neighborhoods, the entrepreneurs populating historic storefronts, the resurgent music scene, and a civic obsession with art, preservation, and culture. Forget Atlanta and its vapid glassy skyline; this haunting, idiosyncratic city is Detroit’s true southern soul mate.

An antebellum mansion succumbing to nature and neglect.

I’m hopeful that the next several years will see a slow improvement in the fortunes of these two soulful American cities, which share more problems, and more potential, than most other towns in America.

Harmony with nature may not immediately come to mind when thinking of cities. But think again. An article in Sunday’s New York Times reminds us that city dwellers, perhaps contrary to intuition, actually live greener lives than their suburban counterparts. Its all about density and distances, and the city always beats the suburbs in these primaries. (Yes, your blogger has been obsessing on politics lately.)

New Orleans Canal Street streetcar line, under construction, 2003.

Sustainable urbanism is the effort to codify and perpetuate an approach to urban development that prizes connections and adjacencies over large private lots and miserable commutes. One of the best ways to ‘measure’ the green bona fides of a new neighborhood development is through the certification process available through LEED. This acronym, now well-known among designer types, stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED was a system pioneered by the U.S. Green Building Council (an umbrella group of developers, architects, and academics) about a decade ago. Originally, the intent of LEED was to stimulate the construction and operation of sustainable buildings. This original LEED system is now referred to as LEED-NC, where the NC stands for New Construction. Architects refer to LEED-NC requirements on an almost daily basis in a progressive practice, where university or governmental clients increasingly demand buildings that achieve LEED certification.

In recent years LEED has expanded its metrics to areas of immediate concern to preservationists. Many of us who gravitated to historic preservation were appalled not only by the loss of architectural character in American cities, but the sheer waste of embodied energy in the land-filled materials and demolished buildings themselves. For preservationists, it is an article of faith that programming needs should be addressed first with adaptive reuse, and then if necessary with new construction. For urbanists (a group often overlapping with preservationists), sensitive infrastructure development is of major concern to vibrant and renewed urban life. Read this recent Los Angeles Times piece for a good object lesson.

I-75 Northbound in Auburn Hills. The old paradigm.

For this reason (and because of the success of LEED-NC), the LEED-EB and LEED-ND systems are going to become increasingly relevant to preservation and planning work in American cities. Look for them to appear soon in model codes, zoning ordinances, and master plans adopted by municipalities across the country. EB stands for Existing Buildings, and includes points for reuse of existing building stock. ND refers to Neighborhood Development, and thus the LEED-ND system is directly related to sustainable urbanism. In many metropolitan areas sustainable urbanism can be mainly concerned with [sub]urbanism, but the acres of empty land pockmarking Detroit make LEED-ND an urgent and necessary reference tool for our future. I will explore the LEED systems in depth in future posts.

And, by the way, Thomas Sugrue–Detroit native, urban historian and author of a highly recommended book on Detroit–is quoted in the NYT article referenced above.