"Invite the best and brightest to compete for a grand prize to come up with designs, including new zoning, building codes and so forth, for New Orleans that could make it safe from water, and let the state and city pick the plan that works best for Louisiana"
About this Quote
Turn disaster into a contest, and you get to look bold without committing to anything messy. Billy Tauzin's proposal carries the gleam of technocratic optimism: bring in "the best and brightest", dangle a "grand prize", harvest ideas, then let local officials pick the winner. It sounds democratic and merit-based, a kind of policy version of American Idol, except the stakes are a city.
The intent is pragmatic on its face: New Orleans needs redesign, and redesign needs expertise. But the subtext is about control and distance. By outsourcing the vision to a competition, responsibility shifts from elected leaders and federal agencies toward an abstract process. If the plan fails, blame can be diluted: the judges chose wrong, the locals implemented poorly, the scientists miscalculated. Meanwhile, the language of "designs" and "codes" frames catastrophe as a solvable engineering puzzle, not a social crisis with deep histories of segregation, poverty, and political neglect.
Context matters: post-Katrina America was awash in rage, grief, and opportunism. Calls for "new zoning" and "building codes" were never neutral; they touched who gets to return, what neighborhoods are rebuilt, and whether safety becomes a pretext for displacement. Tauzin tries to anchor legitimacy by insisting the state and city pick what "works best for Louisiana" - a nod to local sovereignty that also conveniently deflects federal culpability.
It's a quote that sells renewal as innovation, while quietly sidestepping the hardest question: safe for whom, and at what cost?
The intent is pragmatic on its face: New Orleans needs redesign, and redesign needs expertise. But the subtext is about control and distance. By outsourcing the vision to a competition, responsibility shifts from elected leaders and federal agencies toward an abstract process. If the plan fails, blame can be diluted: the judges chose wrong, the locals implemented poorly, the scientists miscalculated. Meanwhile, the language of "designs" and "codes" frames catastrophe as a solvable engineering puzzle, not a social crisis with deep histories of segregation, poverty, and political neglect.
Context matters: post-Katrina America was awash in rage, grief, and opportunism. Calls for "new zoning" and "building codes" were never neutral; they touched who gets to return, what neighborhoods are rebuilt, and whether safety becomes a pretext for displacement. Tauzin tries to anchor legitimacy by insisting the state and city pick what "works best for Louisiana" - a nod to local sovereignty that also conveniently deflects federal culpability.
It's a quote that sells renewal as innovation, while quietly sidestepping the hardest question: safe for whom, and at what cost?
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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