INHERENT RESILIENCE IN NEW ORLEANS

Craig E. Colten Dept. of Geography & Anthropology

Community Resilience

•  Resilience (Wilbanks 2008)

– anticipate – reduce – respond – recover

•  Inherent Resilience –  locally based capacities –  independent of formal preparations

REMEM

BER

Af am pop in 1940

Pontchartrain Park

Lakeview Jefferson Parish

New Orleans Public Library

Formal resilience included forecasting, local evacuation, and coordinated government agency responses.

City schools served as hurricane evacuation shelters.

New Orleans Public Library

Extensive flooding followed Betsy’s passage in 1965.

Corps of Engineers

Lower 9th Ward

Differential Levee Heights 1965

African Americans

Islenos

Colten 2011

Shelters and flooding 1965.

Colten 2011

Flooding 1965 and African American population 1960.

Colten 2011

(2000)

Greater New Orleans Community Data Center

Flood Footprint 2005

2005 – No neighborhood shelters, loss of resilience with only one “shelter of last resort.”

Zaninetti & Colten, forthcoming

Conclusions

•  Marginalized communities survived despite inequities, sustained by inherent resilience

•  Structural flood protection and formalized planning did not incorporate inherent resilience capacities and undermined local resilience

•  Many minorities have relocated since 2005 flooding eroding inherent resilience

Acknowledgements

•  Research assistance Jenny Hay and Alexandra Giancarlo

•  Research funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

•  Graphic credits: New Orleans Public Library, LSU Earth Scan Laboratory, Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Colten 2011, Zaninetti and Colten (forthcoming)