Gentrification in tourist cities: Evidence from New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

Tourism‐led redevelopment often provides city residents with increased opportunities for employment, leisure, and cultural enrichment, but it can also have dramatic and unpredictable effects on their lives. One of these effects involves the repercussions of redevelopment that transforms working‐class neighborhoods into middle‐ or upper‐class areas catering to tourists. We use the city of New Orleans as a case study to explore the connections between tourism and gentrification.

We first discuss the growth of tourism in New Orleans, paying particular attention to its geographic scope. We then consider the ways in which gentrification and tourism are connected in New Orleans and what their relationship adds to theories of tourism development and urban revitalization. The analysis concludes with an in‐depth look at one of the nation's oldest black neighborhoods, Tremé, where both tourism and the nonblack population have been increasing in recent years.     

Evaluating Racial Disparities in Hurricane Katrina Relief Using Direct Trailer Counts in New Orleans and FEMA Records

Are charges of racial disparities in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina accurate? Limited publicly available data on trailer distribution in New Orleans are compared to an on‐site trailer count and to a complete trailer count from aerial photographs of New Orleans. The Lower Ninth Ward in Orleans Parish (98 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) had significantly fewer trailers than neighboring Arabi in St. Bernard Parish (95 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina). To control for administrative differences between parishes and socioeconomic factors, two affluent neighborhoods within Orleans Parish, Pontchartrain Park (97 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) and Lakeview (94 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina), are compared. The conclusion: racial discrepancies remain large and substantial. A number of hypotheses are developed and the implications discussed.     

Administrative Failure and the International NGO Response to Hurricane Katrina

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent failure of government agencies and public administrators elicited an unprecedented response by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) to a disaster in the United States. This paper focuses on why so many INGOs were compelled to provide humanitarian assistance and relief in the United States for the first time and the administrative barriers they faced while doing so. What does such a response reveal about administrative failures in the wake of Katrina, and what might the implications be for reconceptualizing roles for nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations in disaster relief? The authors answer these questions using data from interviews with INGO representatives, organizational press releases and Web sites, news articles, and official reports and documentation.     

The story of Katrina: New Orleans and the political economy of catastrophe

This paper analyzes the public policies that lead to ‘`Katrina,’' paying particular attention to political decisions that created unusual risks in the New Orleans area. Most of the deaths from hurricane Katrina were concentrated in one place, New Orleans, and those losses arose in large part from its location in combination with its three century long effort to ‘`manage’' the risks associated with that location. Crisis management is inherently more error prone than ordinary policy making, because surprise implies the existence of significant information problems and urgency implies that time does not exist to completely address those problems (Congleton, 2005). In New Orleans the unavoidable mistakes of crisis management were compounded by policy choices made well before Katrina made landfall, as well as federalism, partisan politics, corruption, and incompetence.     

The "Big Questions" of Katrina and the 2005 Great Flood of New Orleans

The "big questions" associated with Hurricane Katrina and the great flood of New Orleans lie at the intersection of the natural and human-shaped environments. The interactions dominating the intersection of the two environments are found in the social-political-economic system, culture and history, intergovernmental relations, and law. The big questions are not whether specific individuals were to blame for the destruction of lives and property, and they do not begin with the slow and inadequate intergovernmental response to the disaster. Instead, the big questions involve the roles of individuals, governments, and private markets in creating so-called natural disasters; whether government, through its lead role in the emergency management system, is incompetent, or whether capability and performance in protecting life and property have been eroded through a long-term "hollowing out" process; and whether Katrina's lessons will be learned or merely noted.     

The road home: an examination of the successes and challenges of housing non-profits in New Orleans since Katrina

Hurricane Katrina claimed the lives of nearly 1000 Louisiana residents and damaged about 80% of the building stock in New Orleans. Unequal protection from the hurricane and uneven recovery patterns have left some communities (predominantly low-income and black) with few options to rebuild their homes. These factors have created a high demand for housing non-profits specializing in new construction as well as low-cost home repairs. Drawing from interviews with a number of stakeholders including non-profits completing home repairs and new construction for low-income residents, this article identifies the type, amount and target areas for work done by housing non-profits in post-Katrina New Orleans. Additionally, it identifies the challenges for future work and limitations in the non-profits’ ability to address housing inequity in New Orleans.     

Accountability in Governance Networks: An Assessment of Public,Private, and Nonprofit Emergency Management Practices Following Hurricane Katrina

What is the most effective framework for analyzing complex accountability challenges within governing networks? Recognizing the multiscale and intersector (public, private, and nonprofit) characteristics of these networks, an accountability model is advanced organized around democratic (elected representatives, citizens, and the legal system), market (owners and consumers), as well as administrative (bureaucratic, professional and collaborative) relationships. This concept draws from 2005 events following Hurricane Katrina. Multiple failures of governing networks to plan for and respond to Katrina include a breakdown in democratic, market, and administrative accountability as well as a pervasive confusion over trade‐offs between accountability types emerging from crises. This essay offers several useful recommendations for emergency management planners as well as for those who teach and research.     

Extra‐Network Organizational Reputation and Blame Avoidance in Networks: The Hurricane Katrina Example

Research on public service networks has identified a variety of mechanisms to foster coordination, including trust and reciprocity norms. This article argues that network actors are also driven by a desire to avoid blame. Network membership is often a political responsibility rather than a voluntary act, and members may be at least as attuned to their extra‐network organizational reputation as to their intra‐network reputation, creating an incentive to utilize blame avoidance strategies when failure occurs. Blame avoidance strategies undermine intra‐network trust and coordination, representing a significant threat to the implementation of public policy. To illustrate the potential of the concept for network theory, blame avoidance strategies are identified under the conditions of high political risk and task salience, as represented by the crisis response network in the U.S. disaster of Hurricane Katrina.     

Reaching for the Philosopher's Stone: Contingent Coordination and the Military's Response to Hurricane Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, it immediately overwhelmed the abilities of local and state emergency management officials to respond to the ensuing disaster. Although the U.S. Coast Guard and some military units were on scene shortly after the passage of the storm, there seemed to be interminable delays before the military forces began to arrive in numbers to both provide humanitarian relief and secure the affected areas. This article analyzes the response of the National Guard, active-duty military, and Coast Guard forces through the lens of coordination. We find evidence of the successful use of both traditional hierarchical and network-based coordination; we also find support for Donald Kettl's idea of "contingent coordination."     

Louisiana's Ethical Culture and Its Effect on the Administrative Failures Following Katrina

Louisiana's history of colorful politics and corruption in government is legendary, and within Louisiana, it is something celebrated—or at least warmly embraced—as part of the cultural richness of the state. An oft-repeated phrase is that Louisiana is no more corrupt than any place else, it's just that Louisianans are proud of it. Though such sentiment is certainly not true of everyone in Louisiana, it is a quality that permeates discussions of federal financial assistance to the state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and helps explain the widespread misuse of assistance funds. Yet beyond concern for the loss of dollars are the very real and tragic consequences for the citizens who were most affected by Hurricane Katrina—who have received but a trickle of the flood of money that has poured into the state. For these people, who remain without adequate shelter, resources, educational opportunities, health care, and support networks, the recovery progress has remained basically unchanged over the last two years. An overview of the ethical culture of Louisiana and reflections on how that culture contributed to and exacerbated administrative failure in the wake of Katrina is presented here.     

推动行政发展的新方案——评《寻找公共行政的伦理视角》

在人类社会的治理体系中 ,政府是直接担负着社会治理使命的组织系统 ,政府中的公共行政状况 ,对于社会治理的质量和效率有着决定性的影响。如何提高公共行政的质量与能力的问题 ,一直是理论与实践的焦点。张康之的新著《寻找公共行政的伦理视角》(以下简称《寻找》)一书 ,通过对 2 0世纪 70年代以来的两种“后官僚制模式”替代性方案的全面剖析 ,进一步提出了伦理化的方案。一、关于新公共行政运动的理论方案2 0世纪 60年代末 70年代初 ,一批年轻的行政学家们发起了“新公共行政运动”。这一运动对主流行政学发起了挑战 ,试图清算主流行政学…     

新时代党内法规制度体系建设:价值、逻辑和路径

党内法规制度体系是管党治党的重要依据和基本遵循。新时代加强党内法规制度体系建设是全面从严治党的根本之策,要遵循继承性和创新性相统一、现实性和前瞻性相统一、问题导向和目标导向相统一的基本原则。在路径选择上,要坚持以习近平总书记关于党内法规建设重要论述为指导,以党的政治建设为统领,建设一支规模宏大的高素质专业队伍和构建党内法规制度建设保障体系的现实路径,形成和巩固党内法规制度体系建设的思想保障、政治保障、人才队伍保障和制度保障。     

Incrementalism before the Storm: Network Performance for the Evacuation of New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina revealed a lack of preparedness in disaster management networks covering the New Orleans area. This paper focuses on the operation of networks in preparing to evacuate residents in advance of a major disaster. There are two cases: the relatively successful evacuation of residents who left by private conveyance and the widely publicized failure to provide for those who could not or would not leave on their own. We trace the actions and inactions of various players to reach conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of networks in the special circumstances of disaster preparation.