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Definitely not a shotgun house in the photo. (It's a bungalow.) I'm left wishing the writer would have taken the time to consider a few of the questions that should be rolling through everyone's head these days. Just where are the billions of dollars going if not to provide city services? What is this or any other city without its oldest neighborhoods and residents? Are there ways of building up the land in lower lying areas? Of moving rather than destroying older housing stock? How much of the proposed "higher density housing" is going to resemble the project housing of urban renewal days--both in (un)feeling and utter failure?
The idea that the survival of these older neighborhoods is going to be the demise of New Orleans simply because they would use limited city resources is ludicrous. Outlying suburbs have been allowed to tap city services for decades without paying for them. Now the arguments against sprawl are being leveled at historic housing stock and the city's tax base? It's enough to make one's head spin.
Overall a good, not great article, but please keep publishing articles about New Orleans.
