New Orleans of Future May Stay Half Its Old Size

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Hurricane Katrina may have brutally recalibrated the city’s demographics, setting New Orleans firmly on the path its underlying characteristics had already been leading it down: a city losing people at the rate of perhaps 1.5 percent a year before Hurricane Katrina, with a stagnant economy, more than a quarter of the population living in poverty, and a staggeringly high rate of unemployment, in which as many as one in five were jobless or not seeking work.

Political leaders, worried about the loss of clout and a Congressional seat, press for people to return, but a smaller New Orleans may not be bad, some economists say. Most of those who have not returned — 175,000, by Mr. Stonecipher’s count — are very poor, and can be more easily absorbed in places with vibrant job markets, they say.

Large-scale concentrations of deep poverty — as was the case in New Orleans before the storm — are inherently harmful to cities. The smaller New Orleans is almost certain to wind up with a far higher percentage of its population working than before Hurricane Katrina.

“Where there are high concentrations of poverty, people can’t see a way out,” said William Oakland, a retired economist from Tulane University who has studied the city’s economy for decades. “Maybe the diaspora is a blessing.”

Others, however, worry that permanently losing so many people threatens the city’s culture — its unique way of talking, parading and eating.

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I fear they may be right about this. I mean, the situation could be altered, but it would take a massive governmental effort directed at changing the circumstances that created New Orleans' dire poverty in the first place. That is, millions of dollars would have to be poured into those poor neighborhoods, not just for reconstruction, but for education, welfare, and economic stimulus--if the powers that be had no interest in doing that before the hurricane, then they're certainly not going to do it after; indeed, the powers that be, both locally and nationally, are no doubt quite happy with the way things are now, none of those dirty, lazy, po' folk to mess up their way of doing business. It makes me sick. It really does mean the end of the Big Easy's utterly unique way of life. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that N.O. needed poverty in order to be the city I loved, but I am saying that all those cool, old African-American neighborhoods were what fed all those cool, old New Orleans traditions. After all, Louis Armstrong didn't come up in the Garden District.

This isn't easy to accept, but I'm afraid I don't have much of a choice.

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