Here is some data on employment in New Orleans.
As you can see Leisure and Hospitality is quite large but not near to the number one catagory of Trade, Transportation and Utilties.
I’ll see your Buffalo, and raise you an Akron. :eek:
Seriously, it seems to me that what will likely happen from this is that instead of the city being abandoned, it will become more “right-sized” ie that many people will not return to the area, and much of it will consequently not be rebuilt in the same manner.
This actually may be best for the area in the long-run, from an economic POV, as the remaing folk will enjoy a better level of unemployment.
Also, you’ll see some of the other gulf ports take up some of the slack, as certainly some companies will use the opportunity to relocate for various reasons.
If we abandon New Orleans, Mother Nature has won.
And does anyone else keep reading the thread title as Charlton Heston?
I was not aware we were locked in some face-saving showdown with her. If the geographic location makes it hazardous or downright stupid to have a city there, common sense tells me that we should get the heck out! Its not like Mother Nature gives a rat’s patoot how defiant we are.
Don’t get the Pharaoh angry!
Hey HEY I’m talking to you there. I live in Buffalo dammit. We are not closing up and leaving anytime soon.
I was raised here and came back after living in Orlando, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, and Washington DC. I could make more money elewhere but my living expenses would go up dramatically.
I could go on and on why I think it’s a great place to live but I’d say the same things you would about why your home is a great place to live. It’s where the heart is.
If I didn’t know better I’d think somebody is just angling to steal our football team.
Vegas, Baby.
I don’t know. If we rebuild it, who is going to pay for the cost (temporary shelters, cleaning, rebuilding, stronger flood protection, etc.)?
The point is, there’s only value in that property if it’s dry. And making it dry is going to cost money, mostly out of my federal taxes. So I think it’s perfectly reasonably, from an ethical point of view, to consider spending my tax money in a way that won’t require spending it again in a few years.
Which is not to say I think that moving NO is necessarily the best solution given the actual facts, but I don’t think that there’s a moral obligation to rebuild it and use my tax money to restore the value of someone else’s property, when they were perfectly aware of the flood possibility when they purchased it.
Hey plnnr don’t forget Dubai (Bombay) on your expendable cities list.
New Orleans is worth saving and rebuilding. It’s one of a few unique cities in America. Even when you close your eyes you KNOW you are in N.O. But even with your eyes open, one at times isn’t sure if it is it Kansas City? Indianapolis? Columbus? Cincy? Atlanta? Charlotte?
I agree with most things plnnr and Eve have said!
The problem lies with the Lake Pontchartrain levee. The danger of failure during a hurricane was discussed publicly last year so it wasn’t unexpected. But as usually, 20/20 hindsight is expensive. They had storm induced flooding 25 years ago and have slowly tried to improve the levee system. If only common sense prevailed. As it stands now there are estimates of $25 billion in damage (not economic loss) to the area. Tossing in a little math shows the breakeven point for failure. If there is only 1 hurricane every 100 years then 1% of $25B is $250 million. That number goes up as the time interval decreases between extreme weather events. I’m guessing there is going to be a rethink on the structural design of both levees and connecting canals.
A little irony from the net:
A Rising Problem - No More
Snip-1: Stories of snakes, fish and alligators swimming through neighborhoods following hurricanes haunt New Orleans residents, but not as much as stories of caskets floating atop of floodwaters.
Snip-2 Engineering now allows underground burial in the sub-sea level city, and floating caskets are a thing of the past. “That no longer really never happens in New Orleans because the land has been drained since the turn of the century. A system of water pumps… drains water out from under the city 24 hours a day.”
For those of you saying other Gulf ports can take up New Orleans’ shipping if the city is abandoned, look at this map of the Mississippi River Basin. The major tributaries reach the entire Midwestern US and much of the South. If there is no port city where New Orleans stands, where goods can be transferred from rivergoing to seagoing vessels, all those goods would then cost more because they would have to be transported by truck, rail, or airplane for more of their journey. Here’s an article about some economic projections post-Katrina:
Guess where a big chunk of those exports are grown? The Midwest. Guess how most of them get exported? By river, through New Orleans. So if there is no port near the mouth of the Mississippi River, you are looking at permanent, massive changes in the global economy. New Orleans might enjoy a large influx of money from tourism, but shipping is its backbone.
The local NPR news station here in Seattle had a brief discussion this morning of a probable short-term and possible long-term increase in the amount of agricultural production that is brought west by rail for shipment out of our port while the normal route is unavailable.
hmmm…Memphis is a major routing point for rail/road/ river barge traffic…will it gain or lose traffic from the re-routing?
[nitpick] Bombay is also known as Mumbai, not Dubai. Dubai is in the Middle East.
I tend to think that shipments to or from the Pacific would already come through one of the West Coast ports, instead of through the Panama Canal and up the Mississippi.
That’s a good question. I would guess that if Memphis became the southernmost port on the Mississippi, river traffic might transfer to rails bound for coastal ports.
You are absolutely correct! My bad and my undergraduate degree is in geography. Not sure where my brain was when I wrote that. 
Nonetheless Dutch government has offered to send out dyke inspection team (no jokes, please) to NO. Cite in Dutch
I am shocked and amazed that some of you seem to think abandoning the city is even an option.
My personal oppinion is that everything not essential the Port should probably be abandoned, or scaled-back dramatically. Either that, or bite the bullet and build the most robust system of levees the world has ever seen. Oh, and fill in some of the goddamned land so that water will run out, not in. Otherwise, you’re just asking for the city to get flooded again, which will happen, eventually, and possibly sooner than many are willing to believe. Seems pretty stupid to dump tens of billions of dollars back into a bowl below sea level, surrounded by water, and in a region plagued by hurricanes, if you’re not going to acknowledge the daunting reality of that arrangement and do some fucking efficacious thing about it.
But, of course, I got my first pitting for such thoughts, so obviously I’m stupid, insane, and un-American.
…
I am shocked and amazed that people think rebuilding this moronically located city is an option.
Hey, people, there’s a place in the US where there are practically no natural disasters. No earthquakes, no hurricanes, no floods, no volcanoes, no tornadoes, no plagues of locusts, nothing except the occasional drought in parts of the state; and that just means you have to dig wells a bit deeper.
That’s right, I’m talking about Idaho.
If you were going to take a cross-country trip, Idaho would be one of those states you get an audiobook for. Incidentally, there aren’t many natural disasters in Wyoming, either. You do get some tornadoes in Nebraska, though, and the Mississippi has flooded in Missouri badly enough to create a disaster area.
So, not only are the most valuable cities often built in areas prone to natural disaster; it also seems that nobody wants to build in areas safe from them. Take Nevada, for example: they built Las Vegas smack-dab in the middle of the desert! A desert that gets viciously hot in the springtime, never mind summer. That’s pretty much a continuous natural disaster. On the other hand, the only way somebody would win a trip to Boise on Wheel of Fortune would be by pissing off Vanna White.
In other words, pump out New Orleans and make her up again. Because nobody wants to go to Omaha for vacation, unless you already live in Nebraska and don’t feel like going far.
Gosh, I think Idaho is beautiful, at least the parts I’ve been to.