Smithsonian.com

What is the difference between religion and faith?

Our next innovator will be Reza Aslan, a religious historian who calls for a return to Islamic tolerance. Learn more about Reza.

1. Do you think there are planets like ours?

2. What will it mean to you to point to a star in five to ten years and know that there is a planet like ours there?

Our next innovator will be astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who analyzes light from distant stars for evidence we’re not alone. Read more about Lisa.

Is it OK to make an interest rate return off of lending to a poor person?

Our next innovator will be Matt Flannery, a software engineer who pioneers Internet microloans to the world’s poor. Read more about Matt

I ask the question in an effort to stimulate awareness of New Orleans’ ongoing struggle to rebuild. As a painter concerned with the built environment in the American landscape, I view the thoroughness of the destruction in New Orleans as a clear reflection of the haste and ill planning in much urban development.

We saw how the superstructures failed in this disaster, but when I went down there, a year and a half after the storm, I was struck by the dissolve of the vernacular elements as well. That is, the places that aren’t laden with the glorious New Orleans bohemian mystique, or even symbols of its blatant poverty, but rather, the parts that look like everywhere else in this country. The thinly applied stucco façade of a Popeye’s Fried Chicken had washed off to reveal the plywood underneath. Overbuilt McMansions were left dark and lifeless on overgrown Walker Percian golf courses. Storm damaged strip malls devolve, mirroring their northern counterparts that sit abandoned in favor of mega-malls.

Shoddy construction, poor planning and economic disparity were revealed by the storm in New Orleans, and are doubtful to improve without an ideological shift in development. This isn’t New Orleans’ problem: this is our problem.
Plan it better, build it better. How are we to do that?

Our first innovator will be Lisa Sanditz, a painter with an eye for despoiled landscapes. Read more about Lisa

Welcome to Innovations, the blog which allows you to interact with many of Smithsonian magazine’s young innovators—America’s young leaders in the arts and sciences.

Each week we will post a question to you from one of our innovators that relates to his/her field. We invite you to respond to the question during the week and chat with the innovators and other readers.