In September 2006, our team was selected by a vote of neighborhood citizens and the New Orleans City Planning Commission as the urban designers and planners for Districts 3 & 4 (these are the two largest of 13 districts and include 1/3 of the City’s historic neighborhoods and 43% of the post-Katrina population).

For five months, we held over 100 neighborhood meetings (in schools and churches, on front porches and in corporate offices), working closely with residents to design and submit 50 specific, realistic “bricks and mortar,” action-oriented architecture, urban design and planning proposals for funding by the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), for residents who want and need to return to their neighborhoods and homes.

The urban design plans and strategies address the immediate and long-term needs such as infrastructure, home repair, public housing, open space, sustainability, transportation, education, safety and preservation. The Unified New Orleans Plan was initiated to include all neighborhoods and citizens (rich and poor, high ground and low ground, black and white) in the planning and recovery of the City. Our objective was to successfully integrate neighborhood input through an in-depth, “bottom up” process that listened to citizens as opposed to the first round of “top down” planners that quickly and unilaterally dictated, without discussion or community input, the wholesale destruction of the city’s poorest and oldest neighborhoods such as the Lower 9th Ward under the guise of environmental restoration.

These pages illustrate a small sample of the urban design plans, process, strategies and programs unanimously adopted by the citizens for funding by the LRA. These pages illustrate the comprehensive nature of the team’s research, process and design. We are proud that our work is part of the foundation for the current New Orleans Recovery Plan that promotes revitalization and resettlement by focusing and funding 17 “target zones” – half of these zones are the product of our team’s work for Districts 3 & 4.

The Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP) was developed by an extensive team led by the New Orleans Community Support Foundation (NOCSF) and the Community Support Organization (CSO). Funding was provided by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, and Daimler Chrysler.

Team: Frederic Schwartz Architects with studioWTA, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, Waggonner & Ball Architects and HOK