Gentrification in the wake of a hurricane: New Orleans after Katrina

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New Orleans in August of 2005, devastating the built environment and displacing nearly one-third of the city’s residents. Despite the considerable literature that exists concerning Hurricane Katrina, the storm’s long-term impact on neighbourhood change in New Orleans has not been fully addressed. In this article we analyse the potential for Hurricane Katrina to have contributed to patterns of gentrification during the city’s recovery one decade after the storm. We study the association between Hurricane Katrina and neighbourhood change using data on the damage from the storm at the census tract level and Freeman’s (2005) gentrification framework. We find that damage is positively associated with the likelihood of a neighbourhood gentrifying in New Orleans after one decade, which drives our recommendations for policy makers to take greater concern for their communities during the process of rebuilding from storm damage.

Vulnerable City, recipient city, or climate destination? Towards a typology of domestic climate migration impacts in US cities

“…Although New Orleans’ economy has recovered over the last 15 years, it has come at the expense of the displacement and continued disenfranchisement of the city’s African American population (Zaninetti & Colten, 2012 ) and gentrification of historically black neighborhoods (Aune et al, 2020 ). One study of gentrification in post-Katrina New Orleans found that neighborhoods with a “higher percentage of physical building damage were more likely to have gentrified one decade after the storm” (van Holm & Wyczalkowski, 2019 ). More disturbingly, the results of the study highlight that although displacement is less likely to occur in neighborhoods with a higher African American population, displacement also enabled gentrification precisely because so many African American residents left the city (Florida, 2019 , citing van Holm & Wyczalkowski, 2019 ).…”

“…One study of gentrification in post-Katrina New Orleans found that neighborhoods with a “higher percentage of physical building damage were more likely to have gentrified one decade after the storm” (van Holm & Wyczalkowski, 2019 ). More disturbingly, the results of the study highlight that although displacement is less likely to occur in neighborhoods with a higher African American population, displacement also enabled gentrification precisely because so many African American residents left the city (Florida, 2019 , citing van Holm & Wyczalkowski, 2019 ). This process illuminates that rather than create new vulnerabilities, sudden-onset disasters are likely to exacerbate existing displacement patterns that may make it too expensive for low-income residents to return after being evacuated (Gutmann & Field, 2010 ).…”

Structural racism and the urban geography of education

“…After Katrina, however, housing prices surged by 43%, as the housing stock was transformed from cheap public housing projects to lower-density units, with no plans to provide affordable options for longtime residents (Lascell & Baumann, 2015). As a recent study confirmed, there was a positive association between census tracts damaged by Katrina and those tracts’ eventual gentrification (van Holm & Wyczalkowski, 2019).…”

Disaster and the lived politics of the resilient city

“…The very scale, nature and context of both tragedies are too different to merit an orthodox comparison, but they do guarantee a complex picture of how resilience unfolds in reality, generating the potential for multiple trajectories that align with a lived approach. The New Orleans tragedy was triggered by a natural disaster and was localized at the scale of the metropolitan area, damaging 200,000 homes and displacing 800,000 people (Van Holm and Wyczalkowski, 2018). Conversely, Leningrad was on a much larger scale.…”