The Friulian region (the most north eastern in Italy) was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1976, with over 1,000 people killed, and dozens of villages destroyed, in a 3,300-square-mile area.
To the credit of the Italian government who wanted to move QUICKLY ( Unlike our US Government in New Orleans), But wanted to build new large urban centers away from the villages, and likewise to the credit of the Friuli's leadership, who said NO, and decided immediately that, The region be reconstituted "dov'era, com'era" -- where it was and how it was.
The Friulians desperately wanted to Preserve their Cultural Heritage, and buildings dating back to the Middle Ages, and to do so 100,000 Friulians were willing to live in Tent Cities (" the tendopoli") for a more extended period of time, and in very adverse weather conditions.
It had been only 30 years since the Friulians had to, like many towns in the aftermath of World War II, been put back together stone by stone from the rubble. The towns were resurrected, complete with old walls, narrow streets, cobblestones and sottoporticos.
Their decision again of "dov'era, com'era", not only preserved their History and Culture, but it was done in such a way that their "nostalgia" was guided by good sense, and the Friuli insisted that the rebuilding of Factories and Infrastructure (thus Jobs) take priority over rebuilding of Homes, thus extending their lives in Tent Cities (with the attendant sacrifices and suffering), but layed the foundation for a sensible rebirth that has spurred growth that boosted Friuli's standard of living from below the national median to 17 percent above by 1999. Friulani no longer emigrate to other countries to find work.
There is however one
other important and critical key to their success.
The Fruili rebirth
succeeded because those in charge bore a large responsibility toward the
victims. Each mayor, commissioner, engineer or architect came from a family
whose roots were in those destroyed villages and farmhouses. They had achieved
education and status, but their spirit, sense of duty, and solidarity was
to Friuli, Not personal interest !!!
Please note the Cultural
"earmark" parallels of the Friuli "Focolar" (raised kitchen all purpose
Hearth), and the New Orleans "Shotgun" houses, (built as a long house on
the narrow plots, with a long hallway off which several rooms ran).
In 1976, an earthquake
hit the center of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a region in northeastern Italy
where my mother was born. It comes to mind as I think about the destruction
of certain New Orleans neighborhoods from the floodwaters of Hurricane
Katrina and the debate over whether they are worth rebuilding. The story
of Friuli convinces me that they can and should be rebuilt.
The shaking began in
Friuli at 9 p.m. as families were watching the telegiornale, the national
news. When it was over, about 1,000 people had been killed in a 3,300-square-mile
area, including about 100 workers in a rubber factory and an entire billet
of carabinieri, Italy's state police. Dozens of villages were destroyed;
their stone and plaster houses, churches and old walls, some dating from
the Middle Ages, crumbled.
It was a tragedy, not
just because of the deaths, but because those villages, towns and farmhouses
symbolized cultural fortitude.
The Friulani, whose
dialect is actually a Latin-based language, have withstood centuries of
invasion and foreign domination. For most of the 20th century, theirs had
been the poorest of the north's generally prosperous regions. Friulani
joined workers from southern Italy in emigrating to Germany, France or
Switzerland or abroad for work. But, for them, there has always been the
dream to return to build a home with a focolar.
The focolar, derived
from the word fuoco for fire in Italian, is a raised hearth in the kitchen
where a large fire is kept going in the cold months. Brewing coffee, roasting
chestnuts, stirring polenta, cooking soup and roasting meat are all done
there.
It's the gathering
place where stories are told, where the children sit and listen to the
adults talk, everyone sitting on tall chairs like high chairs, with their
feet on the edge of the focolar. Even with economic growth and education,
few Friulani are more than a generation or two removed from a focolar.
When I think of the
focolar, I think of the shotgun houses and Creole cottages built in New
Orleans from the late 18th to mid-19th century by that great mix of French,
Anglo-Saxon, Creole, Italian, German, Irish and African American folks
who created the city's culture and urban life.
The Creole cottages
dating from 1790 are tiny but elegant with steeply pitched roofs and long
windows facing the street. The classic shotgun was built as a long house
on the narrow plots laid out by French and Spanish surveyors. Its long
hallway off which several rooms ran gave it the name. As New Orleans evolved,
many of these houses added porches and galleries, and a local industry
provided the ornamental brackets that allowed New Orleanians, in the words
of a local architect, to exercise their "deep-down operatic instincts."
Frederick Starr, a
native of New Orleans and a Johns Hopkins University professor, wrote in
the New York Times recently, "Is it any wonder that such neighborhoods
proved so fertile for what might be called the social arts? There are many
reasons why New Orleanians have long excelled in cooking, music-making,
dancing and story-telling, but the interaction of diverse cultures fostered
by the shotgun houses is certainly a major one."
Last month, the debate
on how to restore New Orleans began. Urban planners from around the country
pinpointed the unusual quality of New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods. There
has been a recognition that the Ninth Ward and similar hard-hit neighborhoods
held a wealth of vernacular architecture that, as in Friuli, tells the
story of its people and should not be merely bulldozed.
It heartens me to see
this dialogue occur. I remember the shudder of despair I felt when I heard
of the earthquake in Friuli. Although it did not affect my relatives directly,
I mourned the losses in the countryside. Would the destruction mean that
San Daniele, high above the Tagliamento River, with its little beer taverns
and prized prosciutto, or the walled town of Venzone, where "A Farewell
to Arms" was filmed, be replaced with the blank condominiums in postwar
Italian boom towns like Mestre, or the horrible high-rise workers' suburbs
of Milan?
I suppose I fully expected
U.S.-style urban renewal to occur. But that didn't happen.
I traveled to Italy
in 1984 and drove through the devastated area and found everything had
been restored. Like many German towns in the aftermath of World War II,
Friuli had been put back together stone by stone from the rubble. Farmhouses
with their focolars inside were freshly plastered and reinforced. The towns
were resurrected, complete with old walls, narrow streets, cobblestones
and sottoporticos.
Friuli, with an autonomous
regional government unusual in Italy, was able to take the lead in the
rebuilding with the backing of Italy's central government, which established
a commission and supplied financing. Everyone wanted to restore the infrastructure
right away and provide housing to the 100,000 people who were living in
tents. But when faced with doing it quickly and building new large urban
centers away from the villages, Friuli's leadership said no.
Once the factories
were rebuilt, it was decided, everything else would be reconstituted "dov'era,
com'era" -- where it was and how it was.
It was a bold move
because it required resolve from those in charge and patience from those
living in the tendopoli, the tent cities. But it paid off.
The region was struggling
to move out of its agrarian past and join in Italy's post-World War II
economic boom. The money invested in rebuilding factories and infrastructure
spurred growth in textiles, furniture and other midsize industries that
boosted Friuli's standard of living from below the national median to 17
percent above by 1999. Friulani no longer emigrate to other countries to
find work.
The region's rebirth
also made Italians proud, in a country where big public projects are often
riddled with corruption. It was a source of pride at the end of a decade
that saw political terrorism from the left and the right, even the murder
of a prime minister.
It succeeded because
those in charge bore a large responsibility toward the victims. Each mayor,
commissioner, engineer or architect came from a family whose roots were
in those destroyed villages and farmhouses. They had achieved education
and status, but their spirit and sense of duty were wrought from their
family's and Friuli's hardscrabble history. Everyone had been influenced
by the solidarity of the focolar.
How does the story
of Friuli relate to the future of New Orleans?
Many of its hardest-hit
neighborhoods, particularly the Faubourg Marigny, Bywater -- as the Ninth
Ward is called -- Treme and Mid-City, are where New Orleans' spirit was
born.
According to Starr,
the houses in these areas are far sturdier than they appear because they
were designed by local craftsmen to stand securely on the alluvial soil
under them and are made from cypress and local cedar, both of which withstand
rot.
It may take time, patience
and some less than politically self-aggrandizing leadership in New Orleans
and the rest of the country to bring the Big Easy back to life, but, surely,
if it was done in Italy, it can be done here.
It must be done for
at least two reasons that have little to do with economics but everything
to do with healing.
The largely African
American Ninth Ward residents were homeowners, and they deserve the economic
support and tools to rebuild as a proof of genuine interest in adjusting
the inequities that left so many stranded and desperate in the disaster.
But, perhaps the most
important reason is that those homes embodied a life of communality and
sociability that our country is rapidly losing. They are the antithesis
to the McMansion in the cookie-cutter suburb linked by a highway to a chain-dominated
mall or old downtown remade into a theme park that characterizes the environment
many Americans are forced to inhabit.
Many fear that New
Orleans, even if the popular New Urbanist model is followed, would simply
become a Disneyland version of itself, the shotgun neighborhoods re-created
with contrived architectural finery but little of the soul.
It's clear the city
developed haphazardly, free of grand development plans, and that is part
of its charm. But if residents are allowed into the planning process, to
help decide what to restore and what must be built anew, perhaps some of
that same combination of grit, suffering and joy that gave birth to jazz,
a unique cuisine and this country's most successful melting pot of race
and ethnicity will spawn inventively new homes while supporting small-neighborhood
cohesiveness.
The displaced New Orleanians
have, like the Friulani, a stubborn adherence to custom, history and family.
Given the resources -- jobs, low-interest loans, few bureaucratic hassles
-- they'll come back and build again.
New Orleans will come
back if the rest of us want it enough. And we should want it because the
Big Easy is more than a place to experience drunken revelry on Mardi Gras.
It contains a big part of our story as a nation of people trying to forge
new customs and identity, in Starr's words, "a living archive of American
social and cultural history." Jazz developed in the celebratory life of
New Orleans neighborhoods. To obliterate these homes that are a monument
to those who developed this original American musical art form is, in itself,
a sacrilege.
Bringing back New Orleans
would signal a sort of spiritual rebirth for the rest of us, a way to reclaim
what jazz trumpeter and New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis, with his brand
of fiery sentience, calls our "transcendent and abiding soul."
In Friuli, they possess
a quality of soul because they know their story; it's been told by the
focolar for hundreds of years. We'll begin to reclaim ours if, for a start,
we make sure New Orleans doesn't lose the shotgun houses that embody theirs.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
/c/a/2005/12/17/HOG09G85TH1.DTL
Some ways to help the
people as well as the buildings of New Orleans
Helping to rebuild
New Orleans neighborhoods beyond the high-profile French Quarter and Garden
District means supporting the people as well as the preservation efforts.
Below is a list of
groups that pretty much hit the ground running after Hurricane Katrina
devastated New Orleans. Some are spearheading architectural preservation
and home building, others are trying to help residents return and become
political active.
-- To monitor daily
events in New Orleans, go to the New Orleans Times-Picayune Web site at
www.nola.com.
-- On the preservation
front, you can learn how to donate a tarp and keep track of the work of
the National Trust for Historic Preservation at www.nationaltrust.org.
-- Habitat for Humanity
is committed to building homes throughout the Gulf Coast and is part of
an effort to build homes for displaced musicians in New Orleans. Learn
more at www.habitat.org.
-- The Preservation
Resource Center of New Orleans is trying to help residents clean up their
homes, www.prcno.org.
-- Monitor what Mayor
Ray Nagin and his Bring New Orleans Back Commission is up to at www.bringneworleansback.org.
-- Common Ground sent
volunteers immediately into the poorer city wards and surrounding parishes
to help with basic needs such as food, medicine and legal and cleanup help.
Find out about these grassroots efforts at www.commongroundrelief.org.
-- The Vanguard Public
Foundation in San Francisco is sponsoring the People's Hurricane Relief
Fund to help those in stricken neighborhoods have a voice in the rebuilding
efforts, www.vanguardsf.com.
-- ACORN, or Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a national organization with
headquarters in New Orleans. It's at the forefront of efforts to stop evictions,
provide housing assistance and organize residents, www.acorn.org.
-- L.T.
E-mail Laura Thomas
at lthomas@sfchronicle.com.