Subsidiarity and Katrina

On Saturday at the annual conference of the Christian Law Professors Fellowship in Washington D.C., I presented a paper exploring subsidiarity's implications for the Katrina recovery effort.  One of the thorniest issues is the apparent need to close down particular areas of New Orleans given the likelihood that the city's post-Katrina population will be drastically reduced and the economic base will not be sufficient to support the city's pre-Katrina physical boundaries.  The Urban Institute had suggested that certain areas be closed to redevelopment given their vulnerability to flooding.  That sort of top-down imposition on an issue so central to the vitality of individuals and their local communities stands in significant tension with subsidiarity's bottom-up approach. 

The Bring Back New Orleans Commission established by Mayor Nagin now seems poised to embrace subsidiarity's rationale (even if subconsciously), proposing that residents be allowed to redevelop any neighborhood, but if a neighborhood lacks a critical mass of residents after one year, the city can close it down.  Residents in vulnerable neighborhoods wil be assuming the risk when they come back, but at least they will have the power and opportunity to reclaim their communities, one house at a time.  Even in the wake of a disaster so immense that collective planning seems to be the only hope of a viable social order, subsidiarity reminds us that prospects for long-term, sustainable redevelopment will rest not only on grand blueprints and generous funding, but also on the creation of opportunities for local empowerment through which the victims of the disaster become the authors of their own recovery.

Rob