Letter from New Orleans: Redesigning the Delta 

Flying into this coastal city—circling low over vanishing wetlands, vulnerable oil infrastructure, and receding bayou culture—the problem is easy to see: the Lower Mississippi River Delta is on the brink of collapse. Ecosystems, social systems, port networks, fisheries—nearly all aspects of this globally important swath of river, sea, and city are, as a state planner told us, “on the leading edge of erosion.”

On February 16 and 17, 2011, Van Alen Institute and our partners at Environmental Defense Fund convened an international conversation in New Orleans with engineering experts, coastal scientists, and state and local stakeholders for a progress report on the Lower Mississippi River Delta Design Initiative, a cross-disciplinary effort to reimagine a more sustainable future for one of the world’s most precious delta landscapes.

Today, Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are disappearing because the river’s land-building sediment has been diverted into the Gulf of Mexico by engineered control structures, levees, and dredging. We want to capture that sediment and restore the natural delta dynamic. We want to do it with the collaboration of navigation and oil interests. We want to do it in partnership with state and federal agencies. And above all, we want to do it while building social and economic assets for the people of Louisiana and beyond.

How do we get there? The Design Initiative is envisioned as a highly-competitive, two-phase RFP process that commissions engineers, coastal researchers, planners, architects, and landscape architects to work hand in hand. During a first phase, these multidisciplinary teams will generate world-class, realizable visions that reimagine the delta system as far as 300 miles upriver. During a second phase, one or more of these visions will be selected for further refinement. The results will be vetted by technical teams, leadership groups, and the public—and, we hope, ultimately guided into the region’s official planning efforts.

In New Orleans, we presented case studies from around the world. We debated hydrological models that form the core of the project’s technical brief. We considered different scenarios for the Initiative’s scope. And we discussed how the Initiative can align with planning efforts already under way, including Louisiana’s 2012 Master Plan, which gathers, studies, and evaluates hundreds of proposed projects to address ecosystem restoration and flood protection.

We know design can make a difference, especially on a canvas this big, this rich, and this important. As a colleague from New Orleans remarked, “We want you to show us the art of the possible.” At Van Alen Institute, that’s our specialty. Stay tuned—we’ll look forward to sharing further updates as our work continues.