It's difficult to imagine the size of the population which has suddenly been displaced from New Orleans. As far as I can tell, there's been no large-scale movement from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but current estimates range from 400,000 to 1,000,000 people who have left the city and its surrounding areas.
Think about that. Not since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and/or the Mississippi Flood of 1927 has such a number of people moved from one location within the country. We read about a million people displaced in Darfur and it's an abstraction; in this country it's all too real.
The last time this happened it changed entire regions of the country. Farmers left the Great Plains and headed west for California, and the black migration from the South increased the population of cities like Chicago and Detroit several-fold.
Right now we hear stories that Baton Rouge has doubled its population in the past week. Since that city is only miles up the road, I'd expect many current evacuees there to return to New Orleans once rebuilding has begun. But what about the people who've moved much further? The NYT article above describes the landing of folks in Utah. Others have found themselves in Minnesota, Colorado, and other places thousands of miles from Louisiana. How many of those will be financially able to return? New Orleans may be a much smaller city in terms of population when it's reinhabited.
If that happens, the city's tax base will be smaller and there'll be even fewer financial resources available to provide public services and infrastructure than there were before Katrina. That means fewer schools, less public transportation, less money for cops and firefighters. The city may be rebuilt only to slowly succumb to the sort of death we've heard about in Great Plains small towns.
That can't happen. We can't let 300-year-old cities die.
Posted by Linkmeister at September 11, 2005 04:24 PM | TrackBackIt will also be interesting to see how the make-up of the city will change. Obviously, there will be jobs for those in the tourist, petro and shipping industries. And service jobs.
But with the worst destruction (rotting houses and no insurance) in the poorest neighborhoods, it is a sure bet that racial and class demographics will change.
Of course, the rich will probably buy up coveted acreage after the feds have scraped it clean.
Posted by: pixelshim at September 12, 2005 04:38 AM