Dutch Dialogues

South Louisiana, like the Netherlands, must adapt to the threats inherent to living in a subsiding delta. The “Dutch Dialogues” workshops brought together Dutch engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, city planners and soils/hydrology experts together with their Louisiana counterparts to explore if, where and how Dutch approaches to water management, landscape architecture, flood protection and urban design were relevant to New Orleans as it recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Workshop participants also developed solutions and designed approaches that could make New Orleans more flood-proof, sustainable, resilient, and attractive from both urban design and economic perspectives. The resulting concepts and designs have been the topic of further study at Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Toronto, Tulane University, University of Virginia, University of New Orleans, Delft Technical University (The Netherlands) and Wageningen University (The Netherlands).