Reconstructing New Orleans and the Right to the City

In New Orleans, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina shattered all concepts entailed in the right to the city. In post-Katrina New Orleans all inhabitants should have been granted access to participate in meaningful discussions about the future of the city, protected against evictions, guaranteed a right to work and aordable housing, sheltered and protected in a place called home. But the damage created on 31 August 2005 left 80 per cent of New Orleans ooded with an estimated 107, 000 occupied housing units inundated and an additional 27, 000 sustaining wind damage, making this the largest residential disaster in US history (Brookings Institution 2009). It presented an emblematic portrait of today’s risk society: uncertain, sudden disruption of daily life, arriving any time and any place, releasing a sustained cry for the right to the city and to life.