Over the last few days, there have been a couple of especially compelling letters to the Times-Picayune that we absolutely must reproduce here.

Nathan Chapman wrote the paper yesterday with a wonderful takedown of the paper's editorial inclination against modernizing Charity Hospital and saving Lower Mid-City.

I was saddened by your Katrina anniversary front page editorial directed to President Obama. In it, you used this practically holy occasion to ask the president to advance the devastating LSU plan to bulldoze acres of Mid-City, much of which will become parking lots. 

Katrina's anniversary is a time for us to all come together. A recent Renwick poll showed that most New Orleanians want a modern hospital to be created within the former Charity Hospital building. It is LSU and certain members of the business community who have been driving the current proposal.

That proposal is both wasteful and breath-taking in the damage that it will do to the heart of New Orleans, both to residences and valuable individual businesses.

This will not bring us together, which is what we need at this time.

Mr. Chapman, a well-known community leader, not only recognizes the growing power of the diverse coalition of stakeholders and citizens that want Charity modernized and the freedom to rebuild for Lower Mid-City but also sees both the emotional and practical consequences of driving a destructive proposal into the city's heart.

Today, Ella Stelter wrote scathingly of the recently-released designs for the proposed LSUAMC, comparing it to the failed urban renewal model that broke American cities and urban communities apart throughout the post-WWII era.

I recently read about the designs for the proposed LSU Academic Medical Center and then found some drawings of it on-line. As an architectural designer, I am absolutely horrified.

When young architects and planners are taught about the failed "urban renewal" policies of the past, this is exactly the type of project that would be held up as an example.

Bad planning brought us Armstrong Park and tried to put a highway through the French Quarter. Bad planning encouraged speculation in the CBD that turned historic buildings into surface parking.

If you look at the plans for the medical center, that is most of what you are going to see. Out of 13 blocks, seven are dominated by surface parking. One is a parking garage. That is 62 percent of the site!

City leaders and local citizens must step in to build a truly urban medical district.

It doesn't take a trained architect or planner to recognize a destructive policy or a bad idea. As Ms. Stelter points out, there are plenty of very unfortunate examples right here in our own backyard. That local power brokers consider their plan to abandon the historic medical district and flatten Lower Mid-City to be "moving forward" when sustainable and just alternatives have been ignored indicates just how behind-the-times they are.

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Meanwhile, we're still glowing as a result of incredible the outpouring of support on the streets Monday evening. Don't miss this video put together by Trap Bonner.

More to come!