Assignment #2 : New Orleans

New Orleans is often referred to as the unique city in the U.S and “horrible site but perfect situation” as we discussed in the class because of its history, culture and geographical features. New Orleans is the city where European settlers, African-Americans, Indians and Creoles mingled and coexisted closely together and produced its unique culture, food, language and music. So the city itself is the unique in terms of its culture and history in the country. The city experienced white flight same as other urban cities did but have higher index of residential segregation as well as system of schools. Also, the geography and other factors led the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.

With the civil rights movement in 1960s, the city also had desegregation in school system as other cities in the country. However, in “New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape”, many Catholics who didn’t want this integration with black people sent their children to parochial schools and didn’t want to pay school taxes because they didn’t get immediate benefit from it. And New Orleans developed private school system as to function as gatekeepers for admission into the city’s ruling elite. Therefore, with this racial tension and low investment in public schools, the public school in New Orleans was abandoned to black population who had insufficient educational enthusiasm. Desegregation of school system led more segregated school system in the end.

New Orleans had significant white flight as other urban cities in the country. Since desegregation of school system was effective, Catholic population and even blue-collar middle class white family who are unable to pay for private school fled to all white suburb area. As a result, there was significant decline of white population in the city and blacks outnumbered whites by 3:1 (the lowest white population since 1850) in 2000. Also, this residential segregation led the city had serious crime rates during 1980s and 1990s. Through these events, the New Orleans became more segregated and crime-prone city.

On August, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was covered by water when several levees failed to protect the city from Katrina disaster. The levees were built between the town and the Mississippi river since the 18th century against flooding of the river and storm surges from the sea. But due to this man-made engineering mistake and wetland reconstruction process, the city had land loss and coastal erosion between 1930 and 2005. There were many warnings by experts that the city is vulnerable against flood even with minor storms. According to the wind speed measurement (high wind speed) and other geographical feature such as the city lies below sea level, the Katrina disaster had already been warned and the city should be prepared against the disaster. However, as mentioned in “The Great Deluge” by Douglas Brinkley, with power on the side of shipping, federal moneys earmarked for levee improvement and other public safety projects often turned into harbor upgrades and other initiatives that actually improved the chances for a hurricane to do even more damage for their economic base such as interest of shipping and oil industry.

As mentioned earlier, New Orleans is horrible site to live in terms of its physical location (i.e. hurricane) but it has perfect situation because its favorable competition compared to other cities. However, as the city depending on shipping industry, oil, and tourism as their main revenue source, New Orleans had invested money in its harbor and other industry rather than protecting the city against Katrina. Even though many warnings were given to the city several years before they suffered from Katrina disaster, the city failed to protect itself against disaster and couldn’t save itself.