Urban News

(NEW ORLEANS) -- In the words of traveling circuses, it's time for New Orleans to "take down the tents and clean up the cages" ... Mardi Gras is over. So is the Super Bowl, for that matter.

During the past few weeks the Crescent City has played host to a lot of people, and for various reasons. Not only did Mardi Gras come early this year, the Super Bowl and its revelers invaded the town ... and did so later than planned because of the readjustment of the NFL season caused by the 9/11 terror attacks.

Thousands around the world joined in on the Fat Tuesday festivities, remotely, by watching live action cams provided by the city and relayed by the Times-Picayune newspaper.

New Orleans city workers will now spend the next few days cleaning up the tons of mess left by revelers and will put the city back together in the wake of three weeks that New Orleanians will long remember.

(MIAMI) -- City law enforcement officials in Miami are smiling in the wake of the release of new figures showing major crime there has dropped to its lowest level since the early 1980s. The Miami Herald says that statisticians have to go back nearly 25 years, to the early days of the Mariel boat lift, to find a lower crime rate.

The city's police chief, Raul Martinez, credits the drop in aggressive crime to a more alert citizenry, one that is working more closely with established law enforcement agencies and to the increase in neighborhood watch groups.

In the final two years of the last decade violent crime dropped by about seven percent nationally; in Miami the drop was 17 percent.

The largest decrease in high-visibility crimes in Miami was in the area of "tourists being attacked or robbed." That category is down by 32 percent. Many Miami officials still remember the epidemic of attacks on tourists -- many leaving the city's major airport in easy-to-spot rental cars -- that made international headlines in the mid 1990s.

(MEMPHIS) -- The Memphis Grizzlies NBA franchise may not get the say-so it wants when it comes to decisions being made about new arena construction. The team's owners also wanted a plan to have local businesses pledge to buy as many as 5,000 season tickets. That idea, according to the Commercial Appeal, also is dead.

The paper says that negotiations began last month between owners of the team and developers. But in the ensuing weeks, the team could not come up with a plan to bear the costs of any unexpected construction delays or overruns.

Meanwhile, if the team does not get into new digs by the first of 2005 it has the right to break its contract agreements and leave the city.

(HOUSTON) -- The city's recent change in the speed limit back to 55 mph on many inner-city Interstates and Interstate-type roadways is meeting much quick opposition. Houston has some of the worst smog-caused air pollution in the country. Air experts convinced the city to reduce speeds on expressways as a way to try to reduce the pollution in an effort to comply with federal clean air mandates.

Now, according to the Chronicle, it's not only motorists who are not happy with the lower limits.

The county's chief attorney, Mike Stafford, is asking the state's pollution control panel to delay full implementation of the new, lower limits. He wants the state to hold off on enforcement until mid summer of 2004.

Many have claimed that lowering the limits to 55 in urban areas has a minimal effect on the battle against smog and does nothing but rankle motorists, particularly during non-rush hours when the roadways are uncongested and the higher speeds have become commonplace.