Thinking about Easy City 2: The Environment

[helgatwb]

All I can say about the environment around New Orleans, is that it won't be easy to fix, at least not now. If something were put into place to deal with the river a long time ago, so that people were used to it, it would make a lot of this easier.

One thing that needs to happen is the river needs to change its bed. Right now, it would be a logistical nightmare. The main problem, is, of course, the people. They don't want to deal with it. If the buildings had been built correctly, from the start, so that flooding wouldn't cause the property damage it causes now, it wouldn't be a problem.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> All I can say about the environment around New Orleans, is that it won't be easy to fix, at least not now. <<

That makes sense. However, I'm looking at Easy City as an establish metroplex in Terramagne as of "now." It's still growing, but there's enough of it hooked together to qualify as a metroplex. So, that had to start some time ago in order to reach the current stage.

>> If something were put into place to deal with the river a long time ago, so that people were used to it, it would make a lot of this easier. <<

How long ago, and what kind of differences?

The first really public superhero was Granny Whammy in the 1940s, but there were a few quiet soups before that. The numbers have risen considerably since then. In the 1950s people kind of tried to sweep it under the rug, but it all sloshed out in the 1960s.

>> One thing that needs to happen is the river needs to change its bed. Right now, it would be a logistical nightmare. <<

One possibility is the Atchafalaya route, which would dump America's main river transport into a completely undeveloped area. I can see why people would prefer to avoid that. Another is the Lake Ponchartrain route, which would be a substantial improvement with less (but not no) disruption.

Other ideas?

>> The main problem, is, of course, the people. They don't want to deal with it. <<

That's true. A consideration is that the river acts like a mad firehose periodically. Sooner or later it's going to go completely out of control and we'll be lucky to get it to stabilize anywhere. If that's bad enough, people would be grateful just to have it be a river again instead of a lake.

>> If the buildings had been built correctly, from the start, so that flooding wouldn't cause the property damage it causes now, it wouldn't be a problem. <<

Hmm. From what I've read, the historic buildings are actually among the safest. People built first on the high ground, because they lacked the technology to drain and settle the marshes. The earliest of those measures are only about a hundred years old. Most of the really stupid placements are more recent, dating from the latter half of the century. Floods in 1965 and 1995 alerted people to the problems in lower areas of the city. In the 1980s-90s they noticed the land area sinking; that's something superpowers as well as architecture could address.

Oh, and it would help to add the Easy City tag to your post.