strange ORLEANS -- The city was bar...

strange ORLEANS -- The city was barely arid when Terrie Guerin made the decision to rebuild her family wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.

It was a decision she made with her heart: "I wanted to retain a part of what I had before. I was trying to keep possession of on to family, memories of family."

still "now, well . . " Guerin's voice trails opposite

A extended year has passed since Katrina, and despite multiple planning efforts, it remains unclear what will become of recent Orleans.

Will the Big Easy become a well-functioning city that retains its beloved 300-year history of performed iron balconies and quirky traditions?

Or will it feel the fate Guerin fears, common of neglect and unfulfilled promises? Will "the city that care forgot" decompound into a gutted, boarded-up eyesore while public officials and residents bicker across vision and money?

NO MASTER PLAN

The stakes are high.

"If we don't contest it off, we will have misspent one of the most important opportunities an American city has at any time had," says Norman Francis, leader of the state board overseeing the distribution of $119 billion in federal aid.

No single expected the recovery to proceed quickly. Eighty percent of the city was swamped when the time of risings broke. Virtually all 465,000 residents of the city and roughly 1 million more in surrounding areas were forced to flee; to a great degree of the housing was heavily damaged or overthrowed

Still, civic leaders and others were optimistic one time the water receded. The city could be reinvented -- les vulnerable to flooding and without the violent crime and poor institutes that had plagued it, they said.

still in the past year, planning has become a stutter-step proces with no master plan notwithstanding complete.

A vast plan put together by a mayoral commission was scuttl after residents decried proposals for a four-month building moratorium.

The City Council started more planning at hiring a consultant to work with the most numerous heavily flooded neighborhoods. But when the work is full it will represent only the plans of separate communities, not the city as a whole.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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