Understanding Development Models in the First World

The revitalization and reintegration of marginalized communities and materials is not a challenge unique to the peri-urban settlements of the developing world, nor does it belong to the exclusive perview of inner city policy debate. In fact the amenable conflation of these two scenarios can be found and studied in the contracting cities of the developed world -- cities in which twenty-first century models of industrialized economic dependency and inadequate infrastructure resources have proven unable to sustain twenty-first century socio-urban activity. It is in these cities, the third world of industrialized society, where new development models are required that stand to effect change and induce a more enduring form of socio-economic urban re-enfranchisement.

In the case below, an adaptive reuse project is presented for the Franz Building in Center City New Orleans. Inspired by the mission of an MIT / Washington University collaborative studio, the proposal operates within the studio's general parameters, addressing the same social and urban issues and working within the same site and building restrictions, but uses as its motivating program a much less prescriptive, and inestimably more potent design agenda that stands to encourage a far more enduring model of development that supports and revitalizes the community rather than displaces it.

While the MIT/Washington University studio sought to restore the Franz Building to an inspiring and nostalgic reminder of Center City's glory days so that it could be used for the GWN's city headquarters (shown above), the promise and importance of the building seem unacknowledged by both the studios' design and program selection. Perhaps more palpabley, reusing the building in a more accessible, civic way that has the potential to support a variety and density of uses for the community would be a more effective catalyst for change in Center City, and it is by operating under this premise that a more appropriate community program was selected for the counter-proposal shown below. Outlined in the proposal are ideas for a communal space that could be occupied by the New Orleans Food Cooperative, as well as any variety of community ordained incubator businesses. In this way the building's location and historic significance might be more appreciably harnassed and its emergent potential more promisingly revealed.