Reinventing the Crescent: Riverfront Development Plan | EskewDumezRipple

New Orleans has long been dependent on its majestic river. The banks of the Mississippi River have served many purposes throughout the city’s history and are now poised to play a crucial new role. The city’s economy has suffered the slow loss of maritime activity due to port consolidation and sudden, comprehensive loss of civic stability due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Paradoxically, the hurricane heightened public understanding that the riverfront is in fact the “high ground” and ripe for possible redevelopment. As such, the Reinventing the Crescent Development Plan calls for the East Bank of the city’s central riverfront to accommodate a continuous sequence of public open spaces, and along this sequence establish 15 special environments. Some of these places reinforce and enhance existing public domains, such as improving the riverfront’s Moonwalk and creating a better pedestrian connection between the Moonwalk and Jackson Square. Others are new urban nodes allowing the city to reconnect with the river’s edge. Each of the new development nodes is strategically located to facilitate the mitigation of physical barriers that have kept citizens at an ‘urban arm’s length’ away from their river. Jury Comments This is an innovative and radical approach to readdressing the levee on the Mississippi and reconnecting the citizens of New Orleans back to their riverfront. The typologies that are being developed will transform the visual and physical connection of the city to the river. The use of existing programmatic institutions and amenities to focus development along the river is particularly laudable.