The different responses of New York City to the terrorist attacks in 2001 and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have focused the attention of scholars on the ability of metropolitan areas to recover from disasters (Savitch 2008; Vale and Campanella 2005). In the case of New York City, despite dire warnings that people would flee urban settings that were vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the real estate market in lower Manhattan revived and is now as vibrant as ever. The painful memory remains, but the city has recovered from its wounds (Savitch 2008). New Orleans is another story. The immediate response to the hurricane was often uncoordinated and ineffectual. The long-run recovery has been slow and uneven. The population of the city is still only at about 72 percent of its pre-Katrina level and while the levees have been repaired they have not been built to withstand a category 5 hurricane like Katrina. It is still uncertain as to whether the city will recover enough to sustain the dynamic culture in food, music, and the arts that flourished before Katrina.

The word that is increasingly used to describe successful responses to disasters like these is “resilience.”

Todd Swanstrom
April 2008  |  32 pages

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