Architectures of Mis/managed Retreat: Black Land Loss to Green Housing Gains

Hurricane Katrina submerged thousands of single-story, slab-on-grade homes in low-lying New Orleans, disproportionately displacing African Americans they sheltered and sustained. Critical disaster studies cast charitable individuals and organizations as sponsors of Black survival, yet nongovernmental aid programs remain marginal to scholarship on environmental justice and Black geographies. This paper sheds light on the funding programs, public-private partnerships, and design-build projects by which philanthropies and charities aid Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) in retreat from flood hazards. This nested case study of HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization program and the Salvation Army’s EnviRenew program shows Black developers, planners, and architects of retreat from New Orleans’s Pontchartrain Park Historic District gained public, private, and philanthropic sponsors at steep costs: the loss of land, life, and leadership in sustainable development. Drawing on administrative data, legal documents, and stakeholder interviews, the mixed-methods analysis finds new housing built above projected base flood elevations inside flood hazard zones not by choice or by chance, but in compliance with aid programs requiring Black participation in land buyout programs (Road Home) and Black facilitation of green home building and buying (Build Back Better). The Pontchartrain Park case of “management failure,” which included rescinded grants and land takings, not only illuminates the macroeconomics and microaggressions that restrict where and how Black resettlement takes place. Ultimately, this article reveals climate mitigation patrons relocate BIPOC households and heritage from endangered places in theory, yet, in practice, their relief formulas may house marginalized minorities in precarious places above measured risks.

Aidoo, Fallon S. “Architectures of Mis/managed Retreat: Black Land Loss to Green Housing Gains.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 11, no. 3 (2021): 451–464.