New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has named the city’s head of the redevelopment authority to be the new Chief Resiliency Officer. The new position is part of a program involving 100 cities across the country that is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Jeff Hebert has been meeting this week with representatives of other cities participating in the Rockefeller project. And he is nailing down the meaning of “resiliency” and the multitude of stresses a city faces.
He says New Orleans is under stress not only from water management and hurricane readiness, but from crime and blight reduction.
“We’ve actually taken a lot of steps towards our resilience issues. So we have things like the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan. We have the Ceasefire Initiative. We’ve had school reform. We’ve had a lot of things that many of these other cities are just starting to think about.”
Hebert will remain in his position with the redevelopment authority as he works on resiliency issues. He says he hopes to have a full evaluation in time for the city’s 300th anniversary in 2018.
