Break It Up!

Break It UP!

How New Orleans can finally clean up its act.

Nineteen months after the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is on its fourth official rebuilding plan, and homeowners in the Big Easy have written off the process. The current planning program is viewed as neither good nor bad. It's simply irrelevant.

Nevertheless, you can see pockets of resilience. Hard-hit Broadmoor's active neighborhood association has formed partnerships with corporations and non-profits. Two-thirds of this sector's homes have been rebuilt. As early as October 2005, while Mayor Ray Nagin fiddled, the 5,000-plus parishioners of Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans East were well organized and rebuilding.

These pockets of productivity are notable in that people succeeded with little if any involvement from the central government. To my colleague Peter Gordon of the University of Southern California and me, this sends an important message: Rather than try to fix a doomed political process, neighborhoods should be allowed to secede from the city.

At first blush this idea probably sounds radical, even absurd. But secession is the logical extension of the Unified New Orleans Plan, which, in an earlier incarnation, allowed each neighborhood to hire urban planners to coordinate post-Katrina reconstruction. If neighborhoods can be trusted with this vital task, why can't they manage their own security, garbage collection, noise ordinances and road maintenance? Devolving power in this way goes far beyond UNOP's proposed "citizen participation" and enables neighborhoods to more effectively mobilize their energy and know-how.

Consider this: Secession has been happening for decades. Almost a fifth of Americans now live in suburbs, private neighborhoods with deed restrictions and community-oriented governance. Why shouldn't urban dwellers have those options?

The population of New Orleans has been falling for 30 years as people move away from high taxes, increasing regulation, crumbling infrastructure, entrenched poverty, dismal schools and poor city services. While the government ignores signals of decline, residents vote with their feet.

If seceding neighborhoods in New Orleans were allowed to compete for residents by offering better services and lower fees, voting with one's feet wouldn't necessarily mean leaving the city.

University of Maryland economist Robert Nelson provides a blueprint for how secession might work. A community collects signatures from homeowners. If, say, 40% of homeowners request a secession election, the state schedules and manages a plebiscite. Then, if 70% of homeowners and 80% of votes weighted for property value vote yea, a neighborhood leadership election is held, and the new neighborhood board negotiates transfer of property and services from the city. The state serves as mediator.

Opponents might argue that large urban governments achieve economies of scale, that bigger cities can, for instance, provide fire protection cheaper on a per-person basis. If that were true, New York City would be a model of efficiency and no one would want to live in Greenwich, Conn.

Would secession create de jure rich and poor areas with different levels of public services? That is, in fact, the status quo in New Orleans--roads, police protection, schools and public spaces are better in wealthier areas. Seceding communities have an incentive to pay for more than their share of regional public services to keep property values high.

While seceding neighborhoods may not be ideal, they are better than the status quo. The failure of local government to adequately perform any of its functions, from policing to schools, has brought New Orleans to a crisis point. The future appears bleak, city-managed rebuilding is a failure, and desperate times call for desperate measures. New Orleanians are ready for new, good ideas, not just in urban planning but in urban living.