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Long before the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina or the chaos of evacuation, New Orleans' social
infrastructure was failing. News coverage of the overcrowded Superdome and the city's flooded streets exposed the poverty and vulnerability of many residents, especially African Americans. As New Orleans begins to rebuild, can the city avoid the mistakes of the past, instead creating more effective social support for low-income and minority residents? Innovation and experience from other U.S. cities offer promising strategies for reducing the risks of poverty and opening up opportunities for economic security and success. This essay is from an Urban Institute collection that addresses employment, affordable housing, public schools, young children's needs, health care, arts and culture, and vulnerable populations. All these essays assess the challenges facing New Orleans today and for years to come and recommend tested models for making the city's social infrastructure stronger and more equitable than it was before Katrina.
Introduction
New Orleans has been called the soul of America. It is a cultural Mecca famed for fusion, the soil from which many uniquely American art forms have grown. Its neighborhoods are where cultural
seeds are sown, where traditions have been invented and preserved—including music, cuisine, oral tradition, performance art, visual art, and architecture. These cultural expressions, and the people who gave birth to them, are what give the city its flavor—its international, national, and local identity and its cultural stature. They are, at the core, what make the city a tourist destination and an American icon. Yet, many cultural bastions are the poor of New Orleans—mostly African American residents from low-income communities that were flooded, torn apart, and in some cases, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and the neglect in its wake.
New Orleans' art and culture, formal and informal, are intrinsically valuable as expressions of a people. But they are also part of everyday living and essential elements of the city's social capital, civic engagement, and economic development. Many of the cultural practices and traditions based in African American communities, such as brass bands, second-line parades, St. Joseph's Day
celebrations, and certain aspects of Carnival and the Mardi Gras itself, in its first and true form as a community-based festival, have been supported by systems that even before Katrina were fragile and vulnerable in some respects, yet resilient and invincible in others.1
These systems of support are composed primarily of people's personal resources and networks, and anchor community organizations such as churches, social and pleasure clubs, and benevolent societies.2 At the neighborhood level, such activities foster community identity and the social interactions and connections that make collective action possible. These activities also spur tourism, the region's second-largest industry.
In embracing arts and culture as an important dimension of a city's life, New Orleans has had a great deal going for it, and compared to other U.S. cities, was ahead of the game. People in New Orleans appear to have had a much more inclusive concept of arts and culture than in other places. New Orleanians recognize the importance of artistic and creative activity taking place at both
amateur and professional levels, whether in concert halls and art galleries or in churches and the streets, and in all sectors—nonprofit, public, and commercial.3
Additionally, unlike in many other places, recognition that root culture matters is widespread. This conviction is evident among the practitioners of artistic and cultural traditions as well as among New Orleanians who are not themselves practitioners, but who are aware that these cultural practices help shape the city's aesthetics. Art and culture were understood as an economic driver and an important asset of the city long before scholars and planners around the country expressed any interest in cultivating a creative economy or building a creative city.4
As rebuilding begins in Hurricane Katrina's wake, the losses are still registering. What can be rebuilt and recaptured is still uncertain. New Orleans has lost many of its residents in death and possibly in the dispersion of hurricane victims to other cities. It has lost money, businesses, and buildings. But has it lost its soul? Can the essence of the city be recaptured? Will a new New Orleans possess the spirit of creativity? Will it have the heart, the grit, and the people that made the city so interesting?
This essay discusses prospects for rebuilding New Orleans' culture, specifically with an eye toward including root cultural practices—formal and informal creative cultural expressions carried out in communities, often in moderate- and low-income districts or neighborhoods. It presents findings from an initial scan (through 2005) of rebuilding, recovery, and relief efforts and offers a critique of rebuilding initiatives, particularly vis-à-vis the inclusion of root
culture. The essay concludes with thoughts on how to resurrect and strengthen the continuum of opportunities for cultural expression—formal and informal, amateur and professional—that made New Orleans what it was.
Notes from this section of the report
1. Mardi Gras (or Carnival) is an annual celebration including parades, masked balls, and other festivities over a period of several days preceding Ash Wednesday—the beginning of Lent, a period of abstinence and repentance in the Catholic faith. The principal day of the Mardi Gras celebration is the Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday. Key entities involved in organizing Mardi Gras parades and festivities are known as "krewes." These are based in social organizations that exist in both African American and white communities. Historically, these entities are segregated and reflect the class and racial stratification in New Orleans, with white krewes dominating the parade scene.
2. In African American communities, social and pleasure clubs are mutual aid societies created not only to support leisure activities, but also to help members cope with significant life events such as funerals.
3. For a discussion of an expanded concept of arts and culture, see Jackson and Herranz 2002.
4. In recent years, scholars and policymakers have turned their attention to the idea of the "creative economy," which emphasizes a shift in focus to an economy based on creativity and ideas as the principal commodity. The parameters of the creative economy are not fixed; different sectors, such as the arts sector, currently are assessing how they fit within this concept. The creative city ideology is concerned with drawing on the creativity of residents to address urban problems and prospects. See Landry 2000.
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