The South Bronx, which lies in between, did not stand a chance.

One out of four South Bronx children has asthma.

Neither the destruction of the Ninth Ward nor the South Bronx was inevitable.

And I must say, I spent time in the Bronx working with these kids.

And the Hunts Point Riverside Park became the first waterfront park that the South Bronx had had in more than 60 years.

That small park I told you about earlier was the first stage of building a greenway movement in the South Bronx.

And I knew it would grow to become the proud beginnings of the community led revitalization of the new South Bronx.

Now will we let the Gulf Coast languish for a decade or two like the South Bronx did?

And as others like him pursued their own version of the American dream, white flight became common in the South Bronx and in many cities around the country.

And once this path is constructed, it'll connect the South Bronx with more than 400 acres of Randall's Island Park.

Let's take Bogota. Poor, Latino, surrounded by runaway gun violence and drug trafficking a reputation not unlike that of the South Bronx.

Anyway, the demonstration project is a springboard for our own green roof installation business, bringing jobs and sustainable economic activity to the South Bronx.

In the late '40s, my dad a Pullman porter, son of a slave bought a house in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, and a few years later he married my mom.

And although less than 25 percent of South Bronx residents own cars, these projects include thousands of new parking spaces, yet zip in terms of mass public transit.

We run a project called the Bronx Ecological Stewardship Training, which provides job training in the fields of ecological restorations, so that folks from our community have the skills to compete for these well paying jobs.

In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy.

Anyway OK. Katrina. Prior to Katrina, the South Bronx and New Orleans' Ninth Ward had a lot in common. Both were largely populated by poor people of color, both hotbeds of cultural innovation think hip hop and jazz.

A parade of government subsidies is going to proposed big box and stadium developments in the South Bronx, but there is scant coordination between city agencies on how to deal with the cumulative effects of increased traffic, pollution, solid waste and the impacts on open space. And their approaches to local economic and job development are so lame it's not even funny.