History of New Orleans, Part 1, 2005-2010

Part 1 of my 3-part revision of New Orleans history in Shadowrun!

One thing no one could have predicted when trying to write the future timeline of the Shadowrun setting was the way natural disasters would affect the people and places so described - and it's almost impossible to talk about New Orleans today without mentioning one in particular: Hurricane Katrina. If you look at the Shadowrun timeline for 2005, you'll also see another fictional national disaster took place in 2005 - the New York City Earthquake.

That quake was so damaging it caused both the UN and the Stock Market to relocate - the UN went to Geneva and the Markets headed to Boston. That quake also happened just 11 days before Katrina made landfall and devastated parts of the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans. Here's were my fiction begins.

The New York Quake was so damaging it would take a total of 40 years to rebuild. The East Coast, long an important wealthy financial center, received far more attention and assistance in the wake of these natural disasters than the South did. In addition, the relief effort in New York was far more coordinated than the FEMA relief that showed up in New Orleans.

The City would continue to suffer under what some would see as criminal neglect from the federal government of the United States for years. In fact, the anger over the disparity in response between the two cities would become a major factor in the call for secession that would eventually lead to the formation of the Confederated American States in 2034, 9 years before the last repairs of New York were completed and yet in that time, New Orleans was nearly chosen as the capitol of the new CAS.

How did a city so heavily damaged, neglected by the federal government, nearly become the capitol of a new nation years before the full power of the government was able to fix New York?

Corporate Dollars.

New Orleans has a lot going for it. It's one of the most important ports in the country, has a massive tourism industry and access to natural resources like oil and natural gas. The city was also wide open, as 80% of it had been heavily flooded and was in need of being completely rebuilt. It was ready for someone with a vision, someone capable of seizing the present and making use of what many considered to be a disaster zone. That man was "Old Nick" Aureliusthe founder of Ares Macrocorporation, which officially incorporated in 2003 in the wake of the Shiawase decision in 1997. Ares was already two years into the rebuild of Old Detroit and was reaping the considerable PR and profits that came with rebuilding an American Icon. Ares had the people, the know how and the money. They needed one more thing.

That thing was the connections, and they found him in Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans.

A lot of words have been written about what exactly was offered and given between the two but by September 2005, Ares had wide-reaching authority to completely rebuild the city. Nagin agreed to offer extraterritoriality to the corporation on whatever land they were able to rebuild and allowed them to completely ignore zoning restrictions and other forms of bureaucratic red tape. Although Nagin has always said the results justified the unethical and illegal dealings that allowed them, the courts differed when he was finally charged with wire fraud, bribery and money laundering in the wake of lawsuits filed against both his office and Ares in the coming years against the corporate use of eminent domain against citizens.

Ares wasted no time in its rebuild. They focused on restoring utilities first and the docks and the airport. United Oil, which had also recently incorporated, struck lucrative partnerships with Ares and both companies quickly formed a monopoly on utilities in Louisiana that would last until secession and a wave of nationalist pride forced Ares to take a back seat following the formation of the Confederated American States in 2034.

In fact, both companies made a staggering amount of profit in 2009, when the Resource Rush began. This influx of major profit along with a complete rebuild of practically the entire city and infrastructure helped set up New Orleans a new beacon of wealth, culture and entrepreneurship heading into a new decade, right into the teeth of the Awakening.

Ares replanned the entirety of New Orleans. They hired Frederic Schwartz as the lead architect. Behind closed doors, they told Schwartz what was needed - an entirely new city that paid homage to the best parts of the idea of what New Orleans was, while removing the parts of the city no longer desirable. It is no wonder that Schwartz's work began on the grounds of what had been public housing projects, the 4th Ward. Schwartz was a talker and always framed his projects as a way to strengthen a community and inspire social justice:

The planning of cities in the face of disaster (natural and political) must reach beyond the band-aid of short-term recovery. Disaster offers a unique opportunity to rethink the planning and politics of our metro-regional areas -- it is a chance to redefine our cities and to reassert values of environmental care and social justice, of community building and especially of helping the poor with programs for quality, affordable, and sustainable housing.

From 2005 to 2010, the entire skyline of the city changed as old neighourhoods vanished and new, sleek modern buildings sprang up to replace them. Many of New Orleans displaced residents returned to a city that no longer offered places they could afford and found ways to tell them they were no longer wanted. New Orleans was becoming a playground for the rich and had no patience for the unsightly poor. However, no amount of corporate planning could take into account the depth at which New Orleans residents loved their city and their absolute refusal to play nice and move on. The city began to swell as those who wanted to live but could not afford the new buildings being constructed began to live and squat in those parts of the city still condemned.

New Orleans looked like a shining herald of a New Age, but no one yet new how badly things were about to turn.