People say the city will recover, and the question is, whose city? Is it the city that the tourists see or is it the broader city that really only came to the nation's consciousness after the hurricane?

It will reveal a lot about the power structure of New Orleans.

Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.

New Orleans was slowly sinking, literally and figuratively, well before Katrina.

That's what gives me the most confidence about its return. The cultural provenance of New Orleans stands out in a way that isn't true of other parts of the South. Having this identity that people care about could be critical, especially since there are events where the outside world looks in.

We're trying to conceive of a system aimed at reuniting communities through communications technology, ... The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster.