Governance

The Broadmoor Project: New Orleans Recovery was an effort initiated in 2006 to work with residents of New Orleans' hard-hit Broadmoor neighborhood in designing and implementing a strategy for post-Katrina neighborhood recovery. Conceptualized and led by then Center senior fellow Doug Ahlers, and hosted by the Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program, the project enabled Harvard Kennedy School and other Harvard students to put their governance skills into action to help rebuild one of America's great cities. It also provided an opportunity for New Orleans' neighborhood leaders to build on their leadership skills through intensive Kennedy School courses.

With its success, the Broadmoor Project officially ended in 2011. It has lived on, however, as a best practices model for disaster recovery throughout the world

On this week's episode of "Security Mom," Juliette Kayyem sits down with Thad Allen, then the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Coast Guard, to hear about his experience in New Orleans, 10 years after the tragic incidents of Hurricane Katrina. Allen had been sent to New Orleans to try to fix the botched recovery efforts of the national government.

Juliette Kayyem knows how to have a 100 percent safe Olympics – don’t have an Olympics. Because perfect security is not possible, Kayyem says public officials should aim instead for perfect planning.

"if both the top-down and bottom-up methods of trust building are never going to be risk free, is there a more plausible third option? For example, what if Washington and Beijing forget about trust-building and instead opt for a relationship based on mutual deterrence? Unfortunately, the risks of this option — arms racing, a return to a Cold War-like MAD doctrine, and forever teetering on the brink of conventional conflict — might not just upend US-China relations, they might sabotage regional and global security as well."

Following Hurricane Katrina, the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Project was developed by then Belfer Center Senior Fellow Doug Ahlers to work with the Broadmoor neighborhood to rebuild the devastated community. Highly successful, Broadmoor is now a model of recovery, almost 90 percent rebuilt, with a new charter school, library, and community center. (See Broadmoor Project.)

With Ahlers vision and leadership, the Broadmoor Project has also helped other disaster-struck communities. Here, Ahlers describes how the Broadmoor model is currently assisting in the recovery of three Chilean communities nearly destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. The genesis of the Recupera Chile initiative is described below.

The Summer 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s expanding work on complex cybersecurity issues and Middle East challenges, offers reflections on the role of the U.S. in Iraq, and spotlights work being done by the Center and its affiliates on environment and energy issues.

"When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, then-Belfer Center Senior Fellow Doug Ahlers, a former resident of New Orleans, immediately realized that he and the Kennedy School could help. The result was the Belfer Center’s Broadmoor Project, a collaboration with the Broadmoor neighborhood....Broadmoor is now a model of recovery, almost 90 percent rebuilt, with a new charter school, library, and community center....With Ahlers vision and leadership, the Broadmoor Project has also helped other disaster-struck communities. Below, Ahlers describes how the Broadmoor model is currently assisting in the recovery of three Chilean communities nearly destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010."

"It is worth noting that the only driving-related fatalities this weekend occurred in other states; massive pileups, with drivers stuck in cars for hours on end, took place in states that failed to institute travel bans. Preventing deaths has rarely been simpler. Meanwhile, the deficiencies in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, in particular, led to advancements in federal emergency management support, airline cancellation protocols, communications systems, and the speed of coastal evacuations, all of which came into play in this storm."

Tom Wooten ’08, author of "We Shall Not Be Moved: Rebuilding Home in the Wake of Katrina," discussed his book during a Wintersession lecture in Sever Hall.