Unified New Orleans Plan

In September 2006, our team was selected by a vote of neighborhood citizens and the New Orleans City Planning Commission as the urban designers and planners for Districts 3 & 4. These are the two largest of 13 districts and include one-third of the City’s historic neighborhoods as well as 43% of the post-Katrina population.

For five months, we held over 100 neighborhood meetings in schools and churches, on front porches and in corporate offices. Working closely with residents, we designed and submitted 50 specific, realistic “brick and mortar,” action-oriented architecture, urban design and planning proposals for funding by the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA). 

The urban design plans and strategies address the immediate and long-term needs such as infrastructure, home repair, public housing, open space, sustainability, transportation, education, safety, and preservation. The Unified New Orleans Plan was initiated to include all neighborhoods and citizens — rich and poor, high ground and low ground, black and white — in the planning and recovery of the city. 

Our objective was to successfully integrate neighborhood input through an in-depth, “bottom up” process that listened to citizens. This method stood in stark contrast to the first round of “top down” planners who unilaterally dictated — without discussion or community input — the wholesale destruction of the city’s poorest, oldest neighborhoods (such as the Lower 9th Ward) under the guise of environmental restoration.

The Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP) was developed by an extensive team led by the New Orleans Community Support Foundation (NOCSF) and the Community Support Organization (CSO). Funding was provided by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, and Daimler Chrysler.

Team: Frederic Schwartz Architects with studioWTA, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, Waggonner & Ball Architects and HOK

Location New Orleans, LA Completed 2007 Size 9,200 acres