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Rebuilding Biloxi with Local Wisdom and Universal Design

© Scott Paul Rains

Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, D'Iberville, Ocean Springs, Gautier, Moss Point and Pascagoula - memorize these names, they are the towns of the future. Hurricane Katrina will mark the coming of age of Universal Design as a new cornerstone of city and regional planning. "Livable Communities," "Inclusive Destinations," "Visitable Homes," will find their first large scale concrete manifestation in the United States in these coastal Mississippi towns -- maybe.

Ricky R. Mathews, president and publisher of the Biloxi Sun Herald, issued the call:

Think of each town as a beautiful painting whose canvas was wiped clean on a mean morning in August. We could forever beat our breasts and lament the loss of the beauty and the treasure that we once owned, or we can set out again to lay a brush on the palette of many colors, and create a new masterpiece.

The citizens of Southern Mississippi provide the rationale as made evident n this explanation by Jeanne Argoff, Executive Director of the Disability Funders Network:

An estimated 20 percent of the United States population has a disability making this the largest minority group in the nation. People with disabilities have the highest rate of poverty of any minority group in the United States. Geographically, nearly 40 percent of people reporting a disability live in the South-twice the percentage of people with disabilities in the other regions of the country.

But first proponents of New Urbanism, an architectural style that is courting the region and positioning itself as the noncompetitively appointed sole contractor of regional design, must accept the demographic of the southern Mississippi region - nearly 1/2 having some sort of disability and that number soon to skyrocket as Baby Boomers age and, hopefully, choose this region for retirement.

Universal Design is the architectural design process created by this very demographic specifically to safeguard their interests.

The seven principles of Universal Design, that is to say, the interests of those citizens and visitors with disabilities, stand in clear contrast to New Urbanism's penchant for inaccessible design features and esthetic-before-people priorities.

Abandoning the best of its noble intent New Urbanism projects consistently demonstrate an inconsistency between the philosophy as articulated and the projects as built. Universal Design offers a corrective that is grounded in the character of these Mississippi communities and figures prominently in each of the various components necessary to rebuild a community that is truly livable for all its members and is also inviting to guests.