The Johns Hopkins Institute for
Policy Studies and the university's Evergreen House will this week
present the second part of their Rebuilding America's
Cities lecture series. Edward J. Blakely, executive
director for Recovery Management for the City of New
Orleans, will examine that city's symbolically important
and politically charged urban rebuilding efforts in a talk
titled "New Orleans: The Challenge of Rebuilding."
A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans, the city's future remains shrouded in
uncertainty. Less than half the pre-storm population of
480,000 has returned, many businesses remain shuttered, and
the fate of entire neighborhoods has yet to be determined.
In March, city officials unveiled the Unified New Orleans
Plan, a comprehensive blueprint for recovery that targets
17 redevelopment zones as the anchors of a $1.1 billion
effort to stabilize city neighborhoods and spark an
economic resurgence.
Blakely, appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin to lead the
recovery effort, will provide insights into the enormous
challenges and opportunities that the rebuilding process
entails.
A distinguished educator and researcher on urban
issues and the chair of Urban and Regional Planning and
Policy at the University of Sydney in Australia, Blakely is
nationally and internationally recognized for his extensive
experience in the design of recovery strategies for cities
across the United States. The California native played
roles in at least four other reconstruction projects,
including San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake and
Oakland, Calif., after the 1991 wildfires. The author of
four books and more than 100 scholarly articles, he was
co-recipient of the Paul Davidoff Award in 1993 and was
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994.
Before joining the University of Sydney, Blakely was
dean of the Milano Graduate School at the New School
University in New York, Lusk Professor of Economic
Development at the University of Southern California, and
professor and chair of City and Regional Planning at the
University of California, Berkeley, where he was also
co-director of the Institute for Urban and Regional
Development.
The Rebuilding America's Cities lecture series is part
of Evergreen's annual Garrett Lecture on Urban Issues,
which commemorates the interests of the philanthropic
Garrett family, who owned Evergreen, in recreation and
urban planning issues.
The series is made possible through the generous
support of the Evergreen House Foundation, the Johns
Hopkins Provost's Office and media sponsor WYPR 88.1 FM.
The inaugural lecture was given in 2006 by Pulitzer
Prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger, whose
talk was titled "After the World Trade Center and Katrina:
The Struggle to Repair the Broken City."
Blakely's talk is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday,
May 10, in the Evergreen Carriage House. The lecture is
free, but seating is limited and an RSVP required. To
respond, or for more information, call Evergreen House at
410-516-0341 or e-mail
urbanlecture@jhu.edu.