But we don't discourage economic development in those places. My amortization comment was perhaps not explicit enough, but as long as people think the city will last beyond amortization periods, future abandonment/inundation/end-of-days predictions are not a rational reason to preclude investment.
Most businesses shoot for a payback period of 10 years or less.
I expect you're right about slow death, but it won't be for climatic or geologic or hydraulic reasons.
Fear of those reasons might contribute, but then we've gone full circle back to "alarmist BS".
People just aren't going to come in and build nice shopping centers in New Orleans. It isn't happening and hasn't happened. Why would it when they could build in another city where it won't get destroyed and it will be more profitable?
It is extremely stressful every year watching hurricanes and wondering if your house is going to be destroyed. Then when your house is destroyed it is no fun at all to be involved in gutting it and rebuilding it. On top of that no one is making investments in the city so it hardly has any good jobs.
It isn't alarmist to recognize what is already happening. The climate is creating more extreme weather events that are undermining New Orleans. It doesn't need to be some fake "The Day After Tomorrow" style disaster that people can easily recognize. It is an insidious, slow, hollowing out of the city.
How many water boil warnings have their been since Katrina? How often has electricity been inconsistent in the city? I can tell you it happens a lot more now than it did before Katrina, and it is going to be even worse after Ida.
It's not fear of flooding that prevents anyone from investing in, eg New Orleans East. It's two decades of zero policing.
And there's a reason Entergy continues to operate as a completely separate corporate entity in the city, and it's not because "used to be nopsi".
The water guys can't even operate a billing system, let alone engineer the distribution network. They ran through probably a dozen companies post- Katrina just to do an assessment and map and maintenance plans, and they all quit for having to deal with the city.
That's why they can't keep the water on. But an unnecessary new airport? They had no problem throwing a billion dollars at contractors for that.
If people were afraid of sea level rising, they wouldn't just be moving into another swamp/marsh outside of city limits or across the lake. People don't want to live at sea level without a levee on the North Shore, they just don't want to live in New Orleans, despite the +20ft msl and up levees.
Because the City Council-as-regulator can be astroturfed and snowed easily by false promises about "black-start" capability for power plants and work on distribution systems?
The fact that Entergy has to do so much to convince the city to allow a power plant to be built, should be all the proof you need, as far as why no one wants to invest in the city.
And that black start capability proved it's worth this week.
If they would have done a black start, rejoining the grid would have apparently been more complicated.
But the bigger point is: why does the city fight local investment and improvement of infrastructure? As if the city is doing everyone a favor that wants to build something.
That's what's killing the city, not fear of flooding.
[1] https://energytransition.umn.edu/modernizing-minnesotas-grid...
The amount of real estate investment in New Orleans is incredibly low compared to other cities. They build more buildings in Atlanta in one year than they have in the last 30 years in New Orleans.
I don't think anyone knows just yet. It took 4 days just to do the preliminary power outage assessment.
But "high 5 figures" would be >50k. According to this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/05/hurric... they are looking at 22k power poles.
Were homes twice as likely to be destroyed than power poles were to be damaged?
https://www.entergy.com/hurricaneida/damage/
And Entergy only covers a portion of the area, but includes all of New Orleans and most of Baton Rouge.
There are a lot more trees than power poles to fall. Lots of trees fell through houses, which allowed additional water and damage, and they won't know anything until insurance and possibly an engineer or contractor look at it.
FEMA just started blue roof on Tuesday I think.
But definitely over 50k damaged, if not destroyed. Just depends on where you draw the line.
No one is going to make large capital investments in a city that gets blown away all the time. Every time New Orleans takes a big hit like this people leave, and less money is put back into the city.
The population of New Orleans was higher in 1980 than it is now. I am from New Orleans, and since Katrina the infrastructure has been getting worse, not better.
There probably isn't going to be some big dramatic event that kills New Orleans. It will just keep shrinking and pulling in towards the French Quarter as it gets hit repeatedly by extreme weather events. It will just become smaller and more impoverished over time until it is maybe abandoned at some distant point in the future.
It will be a death by inches.