On Sep 25, 2005, at 4:18, romdom (Dominique) wrote:
i read in a paper that's the old french quarter didn't get flooded
because
it had been built higher than the flood level ..... the ancients did
have
good ideas sometimes......
And more options?
If you study the history of the development of the older cities -
anywhere - the same pattern emerges *almost* universally (there's a
city in Poland, fairly old, which was *not* built on a river. What's
really suprising is that it never became part of the national stock of
"idiot jokes" <g>). People built close to a source of "sweet" water -
preferably *running* water, ie a river - in the first wave of
settlement. Paris has Seine, London has Thames, Warsaw has Vistula,
etc; "sweet" water (as opposed to "salty", sea water) is a sine qua
non, an essential for survival.
As a 5yr old, I was taught that, should I ever get lost in a forest
(mushroom and berry-hunting trips were oftern organised for city
dwellers and my parents always took me with them), I should first find
a stream, observe in which direction it moved, and follow. Sooner or
later, it would join another, and I was to follow the bigger stream.
Sooner or later, there'd be a house, built close to the stream, and the
helpful adults in it would get me reconnected with my family. It does
sound a bit crude and idealistic 50yrs down the road, but the basic
perception - where there's sweet water, there's a settlement - had been
true for years.
As cities grew, *and as technology improved*, we had fewer options
about where we'd settle but, at the same time, we were less dependent
on the river (and the river got more polluted, but that's a different
chapter of the story <g>). At the same time, the properties closest to
the - sweet - water were the most likely to appreciate in value,
excluding the poor from ownership (the hoopla about owning *seaside*
property and getting rich overnight is a much "younger cousin" of the
story).
So, when cities developed - inevitably, if they were to survive, they
had to grow, develop industry and service to the industry - they
spread. With the rich closest to the central "sweet nut" and the poor
ones a distance away, of course... What made that possible (though not
always easy) is that developing technology kept pace; you lived 20
miles from the original centre, but your drinking water still reached
you there, via a pipe. That meant it was possible for *both* the rich
and the poor to move away from the centre. Only, by then, the rich
could afford living 20miles away but in a higher elevation (expensive),
while the poor couldn't, so they lived 20 miles *away from safety*.
Hence the Katrina fiasco, when the technology (and money for it) didn't
quite catch up with reality.
Yon French settlers who'd settled "old New Orleans" exhibited no more
than common sense/old-time wisdom that *I* received, 250 yrs later -
look for a safe place with drinking water aplenty. Over the 300yrs
since the settlement, the realities have changed - we no longer depend
as much on Mama Nature, but we depend more on the government to get us
over her bitchy... er... "periods"? That includes people settling lower
than sensible (unless forbidden to) and hoping to survive. That
includes people counting on "the government" (on all levels) to bail
them out of a tight corner, when unimaginable knocks on their doors.
That includes... Lots and lots of things.
Had New Orleans *stayed* within the original settlement area, Katrina
disaster would not have happened. Whether New Orleans would have been
alive to receive the disaster is another story... 25% of US refineries
are located in the Gulf (*not* the Middle East one, despite our
fighting there <g>), and they're not dependent on tourist trade in any
way; for all I know, they support it.
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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