The Old New Orleans and the New: A Case for Ecology

Social Vulnerabilities and Hurricane Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster in New Orleans

“…The elevation was raised along the avenues where the wealthy built homes, but not where the servants lived (Gilmore, 1944). During the 1940s through 1980s when low-lying areas were drained and developed, "white flight" to these new suburbs occurred, leaving the inner city population increasingly African American and poor.…”

Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts: Toward a Socially Structured Theory of Resources and Discourses

“…Important precursors exist in sociology as well (see e.g. Bernard 1925;McKenzie 1931;Gilmore 1944; for a more detailed review, see Field and Burch 1991), but the sociological significance of the biophysical environment received only limited attention until the 1970s. As noted by Humphrey and Buttel (1982:7), even as early as the mid-1970s, "more than 60 percent of the 4,892 entries" in the most important sociological bibliography of the time (Morrison et al 1974) had been published in 1969 or thereafter.…”

Basin Street blues: drainage and environmental equity in New Orleans, 1890–1930

“…Noted as a city with low segregation during the antebellum period, residential segregation emerged full blown during the height of Jim Crow and Progressive Era. [21] Certainly, segregation existed to some degree in New Orleans before 1865, when the relatively large number of free African-Americans had less access to most public facilities than did Whites. There was some limited racial mixing in taverns, gambling houses, and bordellos, but there were both formal and informal restrictions against integrated activities, and they remained after the war.…”

“…By 1850, European immigrants had displaced most of the Black population near the riverfront of the American sector and pushed them towards the rear or poorly drained sectors. [27] During the nineteenth century, several private drainage companies constructed canals flowing into Lake Pontchartrain to augment the sluggish Bayou St John and enhance the movement of run-off towards the lake (Figure 1). Several rudimentary pumps aided natural flow towards the lake, but the pre-1890 system was unable to keep pace with the average rainfall of 60 inches a year, let alone major downpours.…”