Rebuilding a Lost City

Bourbon Street may have been the stuff of New Orleans lore, a symbol of the city’s quirky decadence, a neon-lit mecca of shellfish, booze, and parties. But for the Big Easy’s poor, the city’s streets—far from Bourbon’s bar scene—bore a more gritty reality.

As the wasted Gulf Coast looks to rebuild, scholars far from the rubble speculate that New Orleans—with a past marked by entrenched poverty, racial segregation, and a local government sometimes better known for corruption than progress—faces an uncertain future.

Despite fear that the city’s poor will not have the support or resources to reclaim their lives, some at Harvard see the hurricane’s destruction as an opportunity to start with a blank slate.

The faces of despair beamed daily on evening newscasts since Hurricane Katrina first barreled through the Gulf Coast two weeks ago left a sour impression on Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Associate Professor of Public Policy Guy N. Stuart, who was struck by the ubiquitous images of black evacuees in the chaos.

Over two-thirds of New Orleans’ population was black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with a third of the general population living under the poverty line.

While a final body count may not be available for months—if ever—experts predict that Katrina’s greatest human and economic toll will be on members of the lower-income black community.

Stuart suggests a rebuilt New Orleans can put aside a racially divided past by physically constructing a desegregated society.

“The images on television are a product of a combination of racial segregation and the concentration of poverty in the African American community,” says Stuart, a scholar of public policy. “Given that there is an opportunity, we should create a more integrated city and a city of more opportunity for people of all races and income.”

He says he remains doubtful, though, as to whether the media coverage has portrayed accurately the racial aspect of Katrina’s impact.

“We don’t quite know what happened to the white population of St. Bernard County—or parish—which is under about 20 feet of water and which is predominantly white,” Stuart says.

Even for those directly hit, the hurricane may present an opportunity for positive change.

A stoic Monique M. Jordan, 27, meandered through Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport last Thursday, seeking a way out of homelessness. Far from her flooded home located in the lower Ninth Ward—one of the poorest and hardest hit areas of New Orleans—she thinks the irony of Katrina is that it will provide a route out of poverty for the downtrodden.

“This is going to be a turn-around for a lot of people. A lot of people could not get out,” Jordan says. “It’s sad that tragedy had to be a new beginning for some people. Some people never been out of the projects.”

And some may never return at all. Eric Belsky, a lecturer in urban planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, imagines a chasm between the rich and the poor in a post-Katrina New Orleans, with those lacking insurance unable to recreate their former way of life.

“It will involve a lot of insurance claims and remodeling as opposed to rebuilding,” Belsky says. “Surely some places that were uninsured will never be rebuilt or it will be rebuilt as something different. The philanthropy would have to be enormous to really provide for all the people who want their homes.”

Joyce Martin, 48, fears her home in eastern New Orleans has been completely engulfed by water. Martin has been on a harrowing journey, after fleeing her home in the storm’s path, she briefly stopped at the congested convention center, then dropped by a shelter, and later, lived at an army barracks with her family. A religious charity offered her a one-way ticket out, free of charge—she chose Los Angeles, the furthest she’s ever traveled.

But she plans to return.

“I miss my city so bad,” she says. “I can’t tell you.”

Stuart believes the Bush administration will have to embrace public housing in New Orleans to guarantee shelter for the displaced citizens.

“If the federal government actually commits to building public housing, there is a huge opportunity there to create a city,” he says. “[But] it is unlike this administration to put such dollars behind public housing. They may go for some sort of voucher system and that’s a little bit more of a crap shoot whether we will simply be repeating the problems which existed in New Orleans before.”

Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at KSG John P. Holdren agrees with his colleague’s lack of faith in the current administration.

“The federal government—and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], in particular—were slow to realize the magnitude of the problem and to start moving resources into play,” he says. “There was no sign that there were any positioned supplies anywhere within easy reach from the areas likely to be affected.”

But with the federal government now poised to offer abundant funding to the relief and rebuilding effort, Harvard Business School Professor of Management Practice Arthur I. Segel ’73 of says it is imperative that the government dedicate much of its finances to attracting capital to the beleaguered city.

And the tried-and-true method of depending on tourism to fill the city’s coffers, he says, just won’t cut it.

“It’s much more than tourism,” says Segel, who predicts that recovery efforts will total $200 billion. “Serious infrastructure issues need to be addressed right away. We need to figure out a way to get business to come back in a big way.”

Segel suggests that New Orleans should be rebuilt miles from its original location, keeping the region’s economic advantages as a trade hub, specifically its port for the shipping of oil and grains, while doing away with its rampant crime and corruption.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation Report of Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in 2003 had the New Orleans murder rate seven times higher than the national average. By mid-summer, total murders in the city neared 200, a nine percent increase from last year.

“There’s going to be a lot of job training and there’s going to be unions,” says Segel. “And there is a lot of political corruption in New Orleans which has to make some a little nervous.”

Whatever the angle, many within the academic community envision a complete overhaul of New Orleans’ modus vivendi—but building a utopia where only water and carnage lie now will be a Herculean feat.

Segel, who sees no choice but to make the attempt, remains a skeptic.

“There are lots of things that are going to have to work right,” he says.

—April H.N. Yee contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Robin M. Peguero can be reached at peguero@fas.harvard.edu.