香港9月17日电／《纽约时报》建筑评论家尼可莱．欧罗索夫（Nicolai Ouroussoff）前去了一趟北京，专门考察新建的场馆和北京的建设，印象良深。前几天，欧罗索夫在电视上看到纽奥良（或译新奥尔良）数十万居民为了 躲避古斯塔夫飓风来袭，全城大逃亡，高速公路绵延数十里，马上想到他在北京的所见所闻，不禁感慨万千！
中时电子报刊发林博文的 文章说，北京是一个欣欣向荣的城市，一个把希望建筑在未来的都会，同时亦象征了中国的崛起。反观纽奥良三年前遭卡崔娜飓风重创之后，城里大部分地区仍是一 片废墟，工兵负责修建的堤防仍像以前一样脆弱不堪；这个爵士乐发祥之地的没落，标志了美国国力的走下坡和一般政客的颟顸无能。
布什执政八年美国国力下滑的速度，在美国历史上罕有其匹。中国政府花四百亿美元办奥运，大兴土木，弄得有声有色，举世歆羡。
四百亿美元当然是一个大数目，然而，转念一想，美国目前每个月花在伊拉克的军费就高达一百亿美元；换句话说，中国政府只是花四个月的美国侵伊战费即办成 一场伟大的奥运。侵伊战费已耗掉美国纳税人数千亿（也许已上兆）美元，但最可怕的是，在其他国家奋力向前迈进的年代，美国却把庞大的资源消耗在伊拉克战 争，联邦许多机构（尤其是研究单位）的经费大幅删减，该做的没做，许多公共建设不是取消就是停顿，美国就像一个未老先衰的病人。
美国国力下降的因素，多到不胜枚举，其中人为因素占很大的比例。所谓人为因素即是各行各业领导人素质不行、缺乏远见、没有能力和私心太重。这批领导人中 最糟糕，也是要负最大责任的首推布什，不少政论家早已认为布什已是个“脑死”（brain dead）的头号政客。最讽刺的是，布什是美国历史上第一个拥有ＭＢＡ（哈佛商学院）的总统，但也是最不懂经济的总统之一，这次美国爆发金融大风暴以及前 些时的次贷危机，所有的决策皆出自财政部长和联邦储贷金奇之手，“望之不似人君”的布什只得靠边站，没有插嘴的份。
金融风暴的 兴起，亦脱不了一些人为因素，许许多多公司的首席执行长（ＣＥＯ），充满贪婪之心，把自己的薪俸与年终红利置于公司利润之上。美国一流人才都跑去法律界和 财经界，出身法界变成做官的终南捷径，而财经界若能发大财，又可当大官，但问题在于很多人一踏上宦途，人品就变了，布什主政八年，司法部沦为卖官鬻爵的龌 龊场所，这批布什等诸君的走狗，为所欲为，无所不为，既敢糟蹋联邦检察系统，又在白宫与五角大厦新保守派的指挥下，把国际公法和联合国人权宣言当成废纸， 私设关塔纳摩黑牢，关押数百名无辜穆斯林，不审不判，动辄拷打或施以水刑。等而下之的一批男女美军则在伊拉克战俘营凌虐伊拉克军人。
美国独立宣言、人权法案和美国宪法所标榜的理想与尊严，在布什时代变成弃之如敝屣的破烂品，美国如同一个没有灵魂的国家，不衰也难！
女史家芭芭拉．塔克曼（Barbara W.Tuchman）早在二十一年前即于《纽约时报星期杂志》撰文慨叹美国国力下坠，其时正是雷根执政晚期，爆发伊朗军售案，官官相护，既不诚实又傲慢。 塔克曼认为美国国力下滑的主因之一是官员无能，而联邦政府刚好被一批无能之辈占据。今天的布什政府，比里根时代烂几万倍，八年下来消耗了美国国力，从经济 到文化，从国防到都市建设，都呈现一片无助无奈的凄凉景象。
纽奥良数十万居民向内陆大逃亡的景象和万象更新的北京适成强烈对照。三年前，布什听从狗头军师卡尔．洛夫的建议，坐飞机在一片汪洋的纽奥良上空盘旋一下即飞走，继续度假。有这样的总统，美国人民怎么会不倒楣呢？美国国力怎么会不下跌呢？
Reflections: New Orleans and China
Lee Celano for The New York Times
SLOW RECOVERY The few buildings in the Ninth Ward that have been fixed stand amid acres of barren land.
Published: September 13, 2008
For Americans watching events unfold on television late last month, the arduous evacuation of New Orleans and the grandeur of the Olympic Games couldn’t have made for a starker contrast.
However one feels about its other policies, the Chinese government is clearly not afraid to invest in the future of its cities. The array of architecture it created for the Beijing Olympics was only part of a mosaic of roads, bridges, tunnels, canals, subway lines and other projects that have transformed a medieval city of wood and brick into a modern metropolis overnight.
Meanwhile, three full years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, much of the city remains a wasteland. As Hurricane Gustav raced toward the Gulf Coast, it became clear that the city’s patchwork levee system could not guarantee the safety of its citizens. The evacuation of tens of thousands of residents was cheered as some sort of victory.
But for those with a sense of urban history, the tragedy of New Orleans is not just about governmental disregard for the welfare of the city’s inhabitants. It is about a lost opportunity. All of the great challenges that confront the 21st-century city — from class, race and environmental issues to the continuing duel between history and modernity — are crystallized in New Orleans.
Yet the kind of visionary urban plan that could address these issues in a bold and thoughtful way has yet to materialize. Instead, some of the country’s greatest architectural minds are inventing the future in cities like Beijing, Shenzhen and Dubai, where their talents are more appreciated.
The signs pointing to this tragic turn of events were there for anyone who cared to read them. The great urban planning experiments that transformed America in the early 20th century were both triumphs of engineering and dazzling monuments to a free, mobile society. Anyone who has watched the film “Chinatown” knows the story of William Mulholland’s aqueduct, which transformed Los Angeles from a desert wasteland into a sunny paradise of trim lawns and orange groves. Less known is the story of modern New Orleans, which exists because of the system of canals, levees and pumps — the largest in the world — that were used to drain acres of marshland.
This kind of bold government planning died long ago, of course, a victim of both the public’s disillusionment with the large-scale Modernist planning strategies of the postwar era and the antigovernment campaigns of the Reagan years. The consequences were obvious as soon as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. And they have been reaffirmed many times since, with the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis and myriad accounts of our country’s crumbling infrastructure.
Still, many Americans stubbornly regard any kind of large-scale public works project with suspicion. Three years ago, for example, the nonprofit Urban Land Institute unveiled a master plan for New Orleans that would have transformed large parts of the city into wetland areas. But the proposal, which was released as thousands of people were struggling to make their way back to the city, caused a public outcry and was immediately dropped. The institute compounded the problem by not including a workable proposal for how to house those dislocated by the plan.
Since then, the most concrete proposal has been a plan by the official in charge of the city’s recovery, Edward J. Blakely, to identify 17 projects, from schools to community centers, that could be used to spur further development. But with a mere $400 million of public funds committed to the project, the plan is not likely to go far. (The city has hired the Boston firm Goody Clancy to prepare a citywide plan, but it is not scheduled for completion for another year.)
The lack of a coherent vision for the city’s future means that some of the most critical reconstruction decisions — like where to build — are left to private homeowners. The notion of concentrating the bulk of new construction on higher ground, an approach that would be both safer and environmentally sound, rarely comes up. Instead, FEMA’s distribution of relief money has sometimes encouraged people to rebuild in the most vulnerable low-lying areas, since it is used for repairing structures damaged by the storm, not for relocation. The perversity of such an approach can be seen in areas like Lakeview and the Ninth Ward, where the few scattered houses that have been rebuilt stand surrounded by acres of barren land, sometimes directly in the shadow of the levees.
When the government has been involved, it has often shown a callous indifference to the city’s architectural history. A few months ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development began tearing down thousands of low-income housing units built in the late 1930s and early ’40s, including several low-rise brick apartment blocks in the working-class neighborhood of Tremé that were among the best early examples of public housing in the country. There have also been threats to demolish Charity Hospital, a towering Art Deco landmark near downtown, as well as several Modernist schools built in the 1950s and ’60s.
Not surprisingly, what little progress has been made has been the work of a few determined nonprofit organizations. In the Holy Cross neighborhood, Global Green built a prototype for a sustainable shotgun house, complete with solar panels, natural ventilation and recycled materials. The house is the first step toward creating a planned sustainable community, organized around a town green that is designed to collect runoff water during a storm.
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right foundation recently completed a competition for the design of several sustainable single-family houses, the first of which are now under construction in the Ninth Ward. And other organizations, like the local Preservation Resource Center, have been painstakingly restoring a number of historical houses throughout the city.
Yet these scattershot efforts, however noble, do not constitute a thoughtful, coordinated urban plan. Shoring up existing levees will not magically transform New Orleans into a model for the contemporary city.
To accomplish that, the city will have to start with a blueprint for preserving the historic fabric that was not destroyed by Hurricane Katrina — not just in tourist-friendly areas like the French Quarter, but across the city. It will need to tie efforts to rebuild the city’s infrastructure to a broader plan that takes into account its shrinking population, the realities of global warming and the racial and social patterns that have shaped New Orleans for decades. And that plan will have to integrate the needs of those who are still suffering the most: working-class people who don’t own their homes and can’t find an affordable place to live.
This will take real brainpower, of course. But the idea that it can’t be done — or that Americans can’t afford it — seems more ludicrous than ever, given the example of China. Sometime later this year, Steven Holl, one of the brightest talents working today, will complete his Linked Hybrid residential complex in Beijing. The project is both a model of sustainable design and a breathtaking example of how to build an urban community in the 21st century. The London-based engineering firm Arup is working on a master plan for an entire sustainable city, Dongtan, in a wetland area near Shanghai.
New Orleans, too, could become a bold vision — a laboratory for how to rebuild America’s faltering cities. It could evolve into a model for the future as compelling and optimistic as the one America offered to the world a generation ago. Or it could remain an emblem of how far we’ve fallen.
