New Orleans – Urban Long-Term Research Area
Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) Project
Kevin Fox Gotham, Principal Investigator
John McLachlan, Co-Investigator
2010 Annual Report
Compiled By:
Kevin Fox Gotham
Drawn from Reports Submitted By:
Michael Blum
Richard Campanella
Farrah Gafford
Joshua Lewis
Earthea Nance
Submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Via Fastlane
Reports System Control
Annual Project Report for Award 0948993
Report Period – Start Date: 10-01-2010 | End Date: 09-30-2011
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New Orleans – Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) Project
Table of Contents
A.
Participants
Senior Personnel
Partnering Organizations
Other Collaborators
B.
Overview of Research Activities and Findings
Project Description and Research Goals
Project Activities
GIS Analysis
Ecological Analysis
Ethnographic Field Observations
Pontchartrain Park
Hollygrove
Lower Ninth Ward
Project Findings
Training and Development
Outreach
C.
Contributions
Contributions within Disciplines
Contributions to Other Disciplines
Contributions to Development of Human Resources
Contributions to Research Infrastructure
Contributions beyond Science and Engineering
D.
Conference Proceedings
E.
Publications and Products
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A. Participants
Senior Personnel
Kevin Fox Gotham, Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean in the School of Liberal Arts
(SLA), Tulane University, is the Principal Investigator and directly involved in all phases of the
research, including: data collection, database management, statistical analyses, the development
of GIS materials, ecological analyses, neighborhood ethnographies, and preparation of reports
and manuscripts for preparation. He works with team members to supervise and coordinate the
efforts of all the researchers, including organizing the three neighborhood-level studies involving
ethnographic field observations in the Lower Ninth Ward, Pontchartrain Park, and Hollygrove
neighborhoods.
John A. McLachlan, Professor Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), Tulane University,
serves as Co-Principal Investigator. He also leads and assists in all phases of the research,
including: data collection, database management, statistical analyses, development of GIS
materials, ecological analyses, neighborhood ethnographies, and preparation of reports and
manuscripts for preparation.
Charles Figley, Professor of Social Work, Tulane University, is a cross-discipline theorist
specializing in trauma and psychoneuroimmunology of communities affected by disasters.
Charles Figley, a psychologist by training, supplys knowledge and research expertise to facilitate
data collection and analysis, train students in research methods, and help lead the overall project;
Figley brings a unique skill to the team – thorough knowledge of the science of trauma
(traumatology). He works with the team to develop the concept that trauma can be extended to
ecosystems.
Douglas Meffert, Center for Bio-Environmental Research (CBR) Deputy Director, serves as a
research coordinator for the overall project and lends advice and counsel on various aspects of
the project's data collection and analysis. He serves as the New Orleans coordinator for
UNESCO‘s Urban Biosphere International Partnership of Cities which also includes New York
and Phoenix (USA), Stockholm (Sweden), Cape Town (South Africa), Istanbul (Turkey), and
Canberra (Australia).
Richard Campanella, Assistant Research Professor in the School of Science and Engineering
(SSE), Tulane University, leads all GIS and remote sensing portions of this project, including
data acquisition, processing and analysis.
Shelley Meaux, Center for Bio-Environmental Research (CBR) Senior Program Coordinator,
assists Mr. Campanella with GIS analysis.
Farrah Gafford, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Xavier University, is in charge of ethnographic
data collection and field observations in the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood in New Orleans.
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Michael Blum, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB),
Tulane University, is assisting with ecological analysis of biological diversity and coordinating a
city-wide survey of the urban forest within New Orleans.
Wayne Zipperer, Research Forester and former co-PI of the Baltimore LTER and U.S. Forest
Service professional, is assisting with the ecological analysis, including the soil and vegetation
component of the research activity. He also lends expertise, leadership, and research skills to the
overall research project.
Earthea Nance, Assistant Professor, Department of Planning and Urban Studies, University of
New Orleans, is in charge of ethnographic data collection and field observations in the
Hollygrove neighborhood in New Orleans.
Mallikharjuna R. Avula (Reddy) is a Doctoral Student in Urban Studies in the Department of
Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans. He assists Professor Nance with
ethnographic data collection and field observations in the Hollygrove neighborhood.
David Baker is a senior research associate in the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane
University. With his extensive expertise in urban forestry, David Baker assists with the
development of a city-wide urban forest inventory.
Brittany Bernik is a graduate research assistant in the School of Science and Engineering at
Tulane University. Her graduate research examines intraspecific genetic variation in marsh
plants influences the development and characteristics of marsh ecosystems, and how use of
selected cultivars for restoration influences the availability of ecosystem services to post-Katrina
New Orleans. Brittany Bernik is pursuing her Ph.D. under Dr. Blum in the Department of
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Brittany Bernik has assisted with the ecological analysis of
biological diversity within New Orleans.
Nathan Cooper is a graduate research assistant in the School of Science and Engineering at
Tulane University. His graduate research examines the effects of forest fragmentation on
Neotropical migratory bird species. His dissertation research includes comparative studies of
birds within forested regions of the New Orleans metropolitan area. Nathan Cooper is pursuing
his Ph.D. under Dr. Tom Sherry in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Nathan
Cooper has assisted with the development of a city-wide urban forest inventory.
Rebecca Hazen is a graduate research assistant in the School of Science and Engineering at
Tulane University. Her graduate research examines geographic variation in plant-herbivore
interactions, with a focus on invasive Chinese Tallow and its insect enemies across the
southeastern US, including within the New Orleans metropolitan area. Rebecca Hazen is
pursuing her Ph.D. under Dr. Blum. Rebecca Hazen has assisted with the ecological analysis of
biological diversity within New Orleans, as well as the development of a city-wide urban forest
inventory.
Theryn Henkel is a graduate research assistant in the School of Science and Engineering at
Tulane University. Her graduate research examines the effects of hurricanes on bottomland
hardwood forest tree species interactions, with a focus on invasive Chinese Tallow, Red Maple,
and Water Oak in the Pearl River basin. Her dissertation research includes comparative studies
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of trees within the New Orleans metropolitan area. Theryn Henkel is pursuing her Ph.D. under
Dr. Steve Darwin in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Theryn Henkel has
assisted with the development of a city-wide urban forest inventory.
Partnering Organizations
Stockholm Resilience Center
City of New Orleans, Mayors Office of Environmental Affairs
City of New Orleans, City Planning Commission
Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED)
Other Collaborators
Charles Allen is the Director of Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Office of Environmental Affairs, City
of New Orleans. He plays two important roles in this project. He is the Head of the Community
Research and Outreach Core for the CBR as well Co-Director of the Lower 9th Ward Center for
Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED). The CSED is a community-based center
housed in the Lower Nine and founded three years ago by CBR and Mercy Corps. Charles has
served as President of the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Association. He represents a key
link in the research/community continuum.
Shirley Laska, Professor Emerita of Sociology and Founding Director Emerita of the Center for
Hazards Assessment, Response, and Technology (CHART) at the University of New Orleans,
assists the New Orleans ULTRA research team to identify successful recoveries that have
contributed to the social, economic and environmental sustainability of communities.
Thomas Elmqvist, Professor of Systems Ecology and leader of the Stockholm Resilience Center,
works with Douglas Meffert to examine changes in the production and consumption of
ecological services in post-Katrina neighborhoods.
Henrik Ernstson, Investigator of the Stockholm Resilience Center, assists Professor Elmqvist and
Douglas Meffert with the analysis of ecological services.
Joshua Lewis is a graduate student at the Stockholm Resilience Center and member of the
CSED.
B. Overview of Research Activities and Findings
Project Description and Research Goals
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The New Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) Project is an NSF
funded project to investigate the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing levee breaches and
flooding (August-September 2005) on the urban ecological and social systems of Greater New
Orleans. As one of 18 NSF awards, the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project includes an
interdisciplinary team of ecologists, biologists, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, a civil
engineer, a trauma psychologist, a U.S. Forest Service researcher, and urban planners, plus
members of the community who bring traditional knowledge to the project and help broaden its
impact. By leveraging the research and education resources of three major universities – Tulane
University, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University, a major HBCU - this research
aims to foster unique collaborations between ecologists and social scientists in generating new
knowledge about human-natural system interactions. In addition, the involvement of local
researchers and scholars from the social and behavioral, and ecological sciences provides for
integrative research that brings together knowledge, capacities, programs, and infrastructure to
provide solutions to post-trauma urban ecosystem problems.
Led by sociologist Kevin Gotham and biologist John McLachlan of Tulane University, the
research project uses a mixed methods research design involving the following two components:
(1) GIS-based analysis coupled with census data to estimate the impact of trauma on social
diversity and ecological diversity within the city of New Orleans; (2) neighborhood levelanalyses using and ethnographic field observations and secondary data in the Lower Ninth Ward,
Hollygrove, and Pontchartrain Park neighborhoods. Qualitative data collected in these
neighborhoods provide insight into the relationships between trauma and ecological and social
diversity, and help identify variation in the timing, pace, and trajectory of post-disaster
neighborhood redevelopment. Data collection in the three urban neighborhoods is guiding the
study of the reciprocal effects of social and ecological processes with the ultimate goal of
promoting understanding of human and urban ecosystem interactions. The reason for collecting
a variety of data using different methods is to bring together the strengths of these different
methods to compare, validate, and corroborate results. Thus, using the New Orleans region as a
study area, the research team examines how variables operate across a range of interacting scales
to influence urban ecosystem properties, and to identify feedbacks to human behavior.
The intellectual merit of this research involves identifying and explaining the complex and
dynamic interactions between human and natural systems in their response to trauma. Our goal
is to address the feedbacks and reciprocal effects among trauma and human actions to advance
both fundamental and applied knowledge regarding people and urban ecosystems. In doing so,
we measure not only ecological variables (e.g., ecological diversity, land cover, and spatial
heterogeneity) and human variables (socio-economic processes, demographic structure, and
settlement patterns) but also variables that connect natural and human ecosystems (resilience,
land-use patterns, and human impact). By using interdisciplinary perspectives and a diversity of
methods and approaches, we will better understand the interconnections of landscape alterations,
institutional transformation, and ecosystem development. Overall, a major goal of the New
Orleans ULTRA-Ex project is to catalyze a transformation in our knowledge and understanding
of the interactions of humans and natural ecosystems by establishing a broad-based,
interdisciplinary research program that targets the human and natural drivers and outcomes of
post-trauma urban ecosystem change and develops strategies for responding to these changes.
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Our analyses are simultaneously context-dependent and longitudinal to elucidate temporal
dynamics of post-trauma ecological and social diversity using different data sources and
methods, including GIS for data collection, analysis, modeling, and synthesis. The data
collection and analysis cover Orleans Parish at the block level, and span across three periods:
pre-trauma, trauma, and post-trauma. These datasets allow us to plot the general patterns of (1)
relative stability before the trauma, (2) the impact immediately after the trauma, (3) the complex
and chaotic tumult in the aftermath of the trauma, and (4) the relative stabilization emerging in
subsequent phases. This study is innovative because it uses a triangulation mixed-methods
design to examine a set of questions that ecologists and social scientists have not examined
extensively and has the potential to advance theory on post-trauma urbanization and socioecological resilience.
Below is a flow chart of the research design listing the major research questions, testable
hypotheses, study area, and broader impacts.
Intellectual Merit /
Research Foundation /
Relevant Literature
Guiding Questions
Testable Hypotheses
Study Area
Broader Impacts
{
{
{
{
{
•Research on urban land-use dynamics and extreme events
•Research on ecological diversity amid disruption / trauma
•Literature on vulnerability, hazard, exposure, risk, resilience, and
sustainability
•Do traumatic events alter ecological and social diversity, and their
attendant spatial distributions, in an urban ecosystem?
•Does the level of ecological and social diversity affect the resiliency of
post-trauma urban ecosystems?
•The impact of trauma on ecological diversity and social diversity will be
correlated at the urban level.
•Parallel social and ecological responses to trauma are more likely to
occur in heavily damaged areas than in areas that have experienced a
lower degree of trauma.
City-Level Analysis:
• Landscape and social diversity analyzed quantitatively across New
Orleans, at block, blockgroup, and census tract scales, 2000-2010
Neighborhood-Level Analysis:
•Pontchartrain Park (heavily damaged, middle-class predominantly AfricanAmerican neighborhood)
•Hollygrove (heavily damaged, poor/working-class)
•Lower Ninth Ward (severely damaged, working-class-to-middle-class)
• Interdisciplinary collaboration
• Peer-reviewed publications and edited volume
• Underrepresented groups participating in meaningful ways
• Workshop and conference participation
• Civic engagement of scientists with local citizens
Project Activities
GIS Analysis
During 2009 and 2010, New Orleans ULTRA-Ex team member, Richard Campanella, gathered
and spatially aligned (to a consistent map projection, datum, coordinate system, and footprint)
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various vector and raster GIS datasets relevant to the citywide measurement and hypotheses
testing of social and ecological diversity. On the vector side, these datasets include population,
race and ethnicity, class (median household income), nativity (at state and national level), age
breakdown, children breakdown, head of households by gender, renter/homeowner breakdown,
and tax-assessed land and home values. On the raster side, these datasets include land use / land
cover data classified from satellite imagery from 2002, 2004, 2006, and possibly other dates.
Other datasets already prepared from ancillary research include digital elevation models and
LIDAR measurements of tree and structural height. Richard has also completed classifying a
September 2001 IKONOS multispectral satellite imagery to map land covers through metro New
Orleans: water, urban surfaces, mature arboreal foliage, grassy and bare soil, and marshes.
Over the last year, progress on the citywide GIS analysis of New Orleans, which endeavors to
detect relationships between trauma and social/ecological (landscape) diversity, has passed the
data production/assembly/processing stage and entered into the analytical phase. Below is the
complete list of attributes stored at the blockgroup level for the city of New Orleans:
Pre- and Post-Trauma Social Metrics
Population 2000 and 2010
White 2000 and 2010
Black 2000 and 2010
American Indian 2000 and 2010
Asian 2000 and 2010
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 2000 and 2010
Other 2000 and 2010
Multiracial 2000 and 2010
Hispanic 2000 and 2010
Total Households 2000 and 2010
Vacant Households 2000 and 2010
Occupied Households 2000 and 2010
Pre- and Post-Trauma Landscape Metrics
Grass land cover acreage 2001 and 2008
Tree land cover acreage 2001 and 2008
Urban land cover acreage 2001 and 2008
Marsh cover acreage 2001 and 2008
Water cover acreage 2001 and 2008
Trauma Metrics
Katrina flood depth Sept 2 2005
Households receiving mail June 2005
Households receiving mail March 2008
Households receiving mail June 2008
Households receiving mail Sept 2008
Households receiving mail Dec 2008
Households receiving mail March 2009
Households receiving mail Sept 2009
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Road Home Option 1 takers June 2008
Road Home Option 2-3 takers June 2008
Road Home Option 1 takers March 2009
Road Home Option 2-3 takers March 2009
Rebuilding permits issues 2010
To calculate diversity, Rich is using the Gibbs and Martin Index of Diversity
This formula requires that the proportion of groups sum to 100%. The social diversity data that
Rich gathered comprises white, black, American Indian, Asian, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Other,
Multiracial (those who selected more than one racial identity), and Hispanic. Because
Hispanicism is viewed as an ethnicity that transcends race, but is nevertheless considered to
represent an element of social diversity, Rich decided to subtract the number of Hispanics from
the White population, thus creating a White Nonhispanic category. This allows for all the groups
to total to 100% of the population. This is an imperfect assumption (there are some black
Hispanics in this region, although the vast majority would self-identify as white and be recorded
as such in the US Census), but it is the only way to entail Hispanicism in the formula. The
formula to calculate diversity was: 1 – ( ( Sqr ( ( [White2000] – [HISP2000] ) / [pop2000] ) ) +
( Sqr ( [Black2000] / [pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr ( [AMIND2000] / [pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr (
[ASIAN2000] / [pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr ( [HAWPI2000] / [pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr ( [OTHER2000] /
[pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr ( [Multi2000] / [pop2000] ) ) + ( Sqr ( [HISPAN2000] / [pop2000] ) ) )
This calculation was repeated for 2010 social diversity, and again for ecological (landscape)
diversity in 2001 and 2008. The results were then differenced to see if diversity increased or
decreased after the 2005 trauma of Hurricane Katrina.
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We now have a large suite of analytical questions to answer, which will be the task of the
concluding segments of this project. Among them are:
What is the relationship, if any, between social and ecological (landscape) diversity?
How did differing levels of flood damage affect diversity?
How did differing levels of population resilience (recovery) affect diversity?
What explains the geography of homogenized areas? Of diversified areas?
In what way did diversified areas diversify (more white? Nonwhite? Forested? Grassy?)
In what way did homogenized areas homogenize?
As of September 2010, all citywide GIS data collection, processing, standardization, and
preparation for analysis is complete for both the pre-trauma and post-trauma eras, with one
exception: the census blockgroup-level data for 2010 has not yet been released/acquired. We
have, however, acquired 2010 census block-level data for total population (high spatial
scale/granularity but no information on race, class, or ethnicity) as well as census tract data for
2010 (too coarse in terms of spatial scale/granularity, but contains racial and ethnic information.)
Data will be finalized, and true analysis commenced, when we get the 2010 census blockgrouplevel data, which is at the right scale/granularity and attribute richness to match the 2000 data.
We nevertheless have analyzed the census tract data, inspecting it for evidence of changing racial
and ethnic patterns.
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Results were picked up and published by the New Orleans Times-Picayune for two front-page
stories on post-Katrina social-geographical changes.1 Census data is being collected by several
team members to identify the social, economic, and policy drivers of changes in number and type
of non-profit organizations, community associations, home ownership and demographic patterns,
repopulation rates, and federal funding.
Rich has acquired the 2010 census and purchased the 2008 satellite imagery. Analysis of the
data is proceeding and will involve a classification of landcovers and the calculation of a
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. He is currently analyzing flood depth figures from
2005 and 2008, data on households receiving in 2009; 2008 Road Home Option 1 Takers; 2009
Road Home Option 2-3 Takers; 2010 Building permits; 2010 Total Population. He is also
analyzing the following post-Katrina ecological (landscape) metrics: 2008 acres water; 2008
acres urban surfaces and bare soil; 2008 acres mature (arboreal) vegetation; 2008 acres
grassy/shrub vegetation; 2008 acres marsh/swamp.
Ecological Analysis
Professor Mike Blum and Dr. Wayne Zipperer (U.S. Forest Service) have been leading the
ecological components of our New Orleans ULTRA-Ex research effort. Significant progress has
been made towards achieving two major project objectives involving ecological analysis. The
first objective is the compilation and analysis of records describing historical and ongoing
surveys of species diversity within the New Orleans metropolitan area. The second objective is
the completion of a city-wide urban forest survey.
With the assistance of two graduate research associates, Mike and Wayne have compiled
historical records of species richness for the New Orleans metropolitan area for the following
assemblages: trees, birds, butterflies, and human-commensal pests including ants, murine
rodents, and mosquitoes. The availability of records for these assemblages varies according to
time period, but all include pre- and post-Katrina periods of interest. Ongoing work involves
further compilation of distributional and relative abundance records for these groups, as well as
records of herpetofaunal (ie. amphibians, reptiles), ichthyofaunal (ie. freshwater fish), and noncommensal mammalian species diversity. This work will be completed by the end of the 2011
calendar year. Statistical analyses of the resulting datasets- to characterize trends in biological
diversity across the Katrina event- will be carried out soon thereafter.
In summer 2010, Tulane University entered into a two-year, $33.5K cooperative agreement with
the USDA Forest Service to inventory the urban forest of New Orleans. Academically, the
cooperative agreement is intended to employ graduate students who will be trained in techniques
for inventorying urban vegetation. Ecologically, the cooperative agreement will establish a longterm monitoring program of the New Orleans urban forest. The inventory also is intended to
Mary Sparacello and Michelle Krupa. June 16, 2011. ―New Home: Hispanic population booms
in Kenner and elsewhere.‖ Times Picayune; Michelle Krupa. June 8, 2011. ―Pockets of city grow
farther apart on race; White areas more white, black areas more black.‖ Times-Picayune
1
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complement the detailed GIS-based land use/land cover analyses being conducted for the region
and for the three neighborhoods used to study social changes. Managerially, the inventory will
provide the New Orleans urban forester with a comprehensive survey of the urban forest;
information that can be used to enhance the delivery of ecosystem services across the city.
With the assistance of a senior research associate and several graduate research associates,
researchers have inventoried approximately 300 plots (1 plot/km2) that have been established
across Orleans Parish and into Jefferson Parish (see field sampling maps above). Approximately
half of the sample plots, located within Orleans Parish, were inventoried in Fall 2010 following
protocols similar to those used by the CAP and BES LTERs. The remaining plots, located within
neighboring Jefferson Parish, were inventoried in Summer 2011. Data from the inventory has
recently been made available in an electronic format, which is a precursor to subsequent
analyses. Planned analyses, to be completed by Spring 2012, include spatial analysis of tree
species diversity and the development of a city-wide vegetation map. Researchers will also
compare the New Orleans urban forest to forests in other Gulf Coast cities (Houston, Pensacola,
and Tampa) to identify similarities and differences in structure, composition and availability of
ecosystem services. A full report will be developed and delivered to the New Orleans urban
forester by May 2012.
Below are images showing city-wide and neighborhood scale studies based on compilation and
processing of LU/LC data, and collection of biodiversity data.
Shown above: classification of pre-trauma (2001) raw Ikonos satellite imagery (left) into land
cover information (right).
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Ethnographic Field Observations
Ethnographic field observations are progressing in the three study neighborhoods - e.g,
Pontchartrain Park, Lower Ninth Ward, and Holly Grove. Census data is being gathered by
several team members to assess changes in home ownership patterns, demographic shifts over
time, return rates, federal funding, number of community organizations, NGO involvement, and
so forth on a neighborhood scale. Team members also organized quadrants of field maps of the
sampling grid for the ecological analysis of our New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project.
Below is a map of New Orleans that shows the three neighborhood study areas. New Orleans
neighborhoods are well known for their rich history, long-standing cultural authenticity, and
strong family and network connections. Pontchartrain Park is often referred to as the first
middle-class African-American housing subdivision in New Orleans. Located in the Gentilly
area of the city, Pontchartrain Park was established during the 1950s for a small but growing
post-World War II black middle class that faced a rigid system of Jim Crow segregation. The
Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood is a historically working class area that has witnessed much
demographic transition over the decades. The fight over school integration in the early 1960s
triggered a mass exodus of whites to neighboring St. Bernard Parish. Hurricane Betsy flooded
80 percent of the neighborhood in 1965, leading to further out-migration by whites and wealthier
African-Americans. By 2000, the neighborhood was nearly 95 percent African-American, with
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poverty rates reaching nearly a third of the total population of around 20,000. Like Pontchartrain
Park and the Lower Ninth Ward, the major residential development of Hollygrove took place
during the Post-World War II period. Over time, Hollygrove became a predominantly AfricanAmerican neighborhood. By 2000, the neighborhood was 95 percent African-American with
almost 28 percent of its 7222 residents living below the federal poverty level.
The table below shows recovery rates by the three neighborhoods.
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The above table provides an overview of population recovery estimates and related demographic
data for our study neighborhoods. We include census 2000 data on median household income,
population, ethnic and racial population, and percent nonwhite. We also include post-Katrina
recovery data from 2008-2010 showing households receiving mail in various months. The table
also lists numbers and percentages of households returning based on mail and information from
the Road Home program which provides compensation to Louisiana homeowners affected by
Hurricanes Katrina or Rita for the damage to their homes. The Road Home program distributes
rebuilding grants to three types of homeowners: Homeowners who want to stay in their homes
(referred to as ―Option 1: Stay‖); homeowners who want to sell the home they occupied as of the
date of the storms to the state, but remain homeowners in Louisiana (referred to as ―Option 2:
Relocate‖); and homeowners who want to sell the home they occupied as of the date of the
storms to the state, and either move out of the state or remain in the state but as a renter (referred
to as ―Option 3: Sell‖).
The figure below shows pre-trauma social diversity (pie charts) overlaid upon post-trauma
population recovery as measured by households receiving mail (2005-2009).
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One interesting finding from the data collection and analysis that variation in population
recovery patterns (as measured by households receiving mail at the block level, until the Census
2010 is tabulated) can be largely explained by pre-trauma socio-economic differences (median
household income at the blockgroup level in this case) and trauma intensity (flood depth at 5meter pixels in this case) (see figure below). Thus, poor, deeply flooded areas are slowest to
recover; wealthier deeply flooded areas and poorer less-flooded areas tend to have roughly the
same 60-to-70% recovery rates; and wealthiest unflooded areas generally have ~99-100% return.
The exceptions tend to be public housing or multi-family Section 8 housing. Very few multifamily Section 8 housing developments have reopened since the storm and only one public
housing development, the Iberville complex just north of the French Quarter, has reopened. All
other public housing developments have been demolished and are currently being rebuilt as
mixed-income housing. In short, as noted in the map below, repopulation patterns (measured in
households receiving mail) correlate with flood depth and social class (measured by household
income) at the block-group level.
The figure below shows the socio-economic makeup of the city compared to flood depth and
recovery patterns.
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19
More than five years after Katrina‚ large–scale redevelopment projects including school
reconstruction, and federal disaster aid are driving population shifts in New Orleans
neighborhoods. Neighborhoods containing the former public housing developments such as
B.W. Cooper‚ Florida‚ and St. Bernard still have less than half of the active residential addresses
they did in June 2005. On the other hand, the neighborhood with the highest rate of ―population
resilience‖ is the former St. Thomas public housing site that was in the middle of redevelopment
when the Hurricane Katrina roared ashore. That neighborhood‚ now known as River Gardens‚
has more than double the households it had when the levees failed.
Pontchartrain Park
From Fall 2010 through August 2011, Farrah Gafford‘s ethnographic field research in
Pontchartrain Park included attendance at three Pontchartrain Park Improvement Association
meetings, two neighborhood events (the neighborhood‘s annual Fourth of July Celebration and
the groundbreaking ceremony of the Wesely Barrow Stadium), and one Pontchartrain Park
Community Development Corporation meeting. After taking hand-written field notes, she typed
and coded (open) notes for common themes (12 single spaced typed pages).
Background Information and Current Status of Recovery in Pontchartrain Park
At the time of Hurricane Katrina, there was a stark contrast between the neighborhood
characteristics of Pontchartrain Park and many of the city‘s majority black neighborhoods. For
example, many of the majority black neighborhoods were a part of extreme poverty tracts, or
tracts where at least 40% of the population lived below the poverty line. Over the years, the
poverty rate in the neighborhood remained low (the poverty rate never exceeded 12 percent).
Various amenities such as tennis courts, a small baseball stadium and a golf course also set the
neighborhood apart from other black neighborhoods in the city. The neighborhood also had a
reputation for its civically engaged residents and a high percentage of homeowners; as of the
2000 Census, 92 percent of the residents in Pontchartrain Park owned their homes.
Five years after Katrina, Pontchartrain Park suffers from an uneven recovery characterized by
blocks of blight among restored homes and limited access to grocery stores and shopping malls.
As of June 2009, only 62 percent of the residents in the neighborhood known for its high rate of
homeownership had returned. Ethnographic field observations suggest that the slow return and
uneven recovery can be linked to the enduring legacy of residential segregation. The first
generation of Pontchartrain Park residents were part of a small black middle class during the
1950s and 1960s that were able to purchase homes, though in an explicitly segregated
neighborhood. Because of rampant discrimination, the chance for economic prosperity and
upward mobility for the black middle class during the 1950s and 1960s was limited. By 2005,
this group was even more vulnerable because of their age. In 1960, shortly after the
neighborhood opened, only 2.1 percent of the neighborhood was sixty-five years and older.
Before Katrina, thirty percent of the adults in the neighborhood were 65 or older.
Despite the slow and uneven pace of recovery in Pontchartrain Park, neighborhood residents
have formed cross-scale networks with local and extra-local organizations to leverage material
and cultural resources to revitalize their community. Data collected from neighborhood meetings
show that the neighborhood associations, in particular, serve as vehicles of recovery.
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Neighborhood associations sponsor events that cultivate a neighborhood identity and solidarity,
distribute information about the well being of the community, and provide an opportunity to
forge partnership with local community leaders and representatives. Since early 2008,
Pontchartrain Park has had two active neighborhood associations. The Pontilly Neighborhood
Association, a local nonprofit organization, has been a part of the neighborhood for more than
twenty-five years and played a significant role in the neighborhood‘s revitalization after
Hurricane Katrina. Early on in the recovery effort, the Pontilly Neighborhood Association was
responsible for planning and hosting several large neighborhood meetings attended by local
residents, neighborhood church leaders, the city councilperson and urban planners. The
meetings provided a forum for residents to communicate, share information, voice their concerns
with the local recovery, and pool share resources to assist one another.
In 2006, actor/activist Wendell Pierce (along with several peers whose parents still reside in the
neighborhood) re-established the Pontchartrain Park Improvement Association (PPIA), an
organization that had been dormant for over two decades. The PPIA consists of two entities, the
neighborhood association and a community development corporation (CDC). In particular, the
CDC serves as the planning, business and financial interface between development and planning
organizations and the residents of the Pontchartrain Park community. Since the organization‘s
return to the neighborhood, the CDC has acquired lots from New Orleans Re-development
Authority (NORA) to build new homes in Pontchartrain Park. On May 14th the PPDC launched
the opening of the Design and Sales Center. The Pontchartrain Park Community Development
Corporation has served as the main vehicle in the redevelopment of the neighborhood by
purchasing property and redeveloping homes.
Over the past year, Farrah has identified two important themes from field note data gathered
during ethnographic observations for the annual reporting period.
Theme 1: Progress and New Developments in the Neighborhood
Two recent neighborhood events have served as important indicators of the neighborhood‘s
recovery. The New Orleans City Council approved an agreement on June 16, 2011, between
Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Major League Baseball Urban Youth Foundation to build and operate
a year-round youth baseball- and softball-outreach program at Wesley Barrow Stadium in
Pontchartrain Park. The MLB Urban Youth Academy will provide year long programs for more
than 1,500 underserved New Orleans area youth. One of the outcomes of this partnership is a
newly renovated stadium (sponsored by MLB) that will be housed in the Pontchartrain Park
neighborhood. On August 10, 2011, Farrah Gafford attended the groundbreaking ceremony for
the construction of the new stadium. Those in attendance included the mayor of New Orleans,
several city council members, several Pontchartrain Park residents and members of the
Pontchartrain Park Improvement Association. Several officials from the Major League Baseball
organization also attended the groundbreaking ceremony.
Politicians and representatives from the Major League Baseball organization framed the
redevelopment of this particular neighborhood space as a way to deter crime in New Orleans by
providing an outlet for the city‘s youth. Speakers who offered brief remarks during the hour long
ceremony described the partnership between the city and MLB as a way to ―give kids a sense of
hope, purpose and the skills they need to do better in life.‖ Mayor Landrieu told the audience that
the youth who participate in the MLB youth academy ―will be learning life skills.‖
21
Other notable figures who spoke during the ceremony framed the renovation of the
neighborhood space as a sign of the ongoing recovery of New Orleans. During his comments,
Mitch Landrieu boasted that the recovery in New Orleans was moving forward at a ―break-neck‖
pace. He told the crowd that the groundbreaking of the stadium along with several other projects
(including the groundbreaking of the Lawless High school in the 9th Ward neighborhood, the
recent renovations of the New Orleans Superdome and the opening of an urgent health care
clinic in New Orleans East) were all signs of the city‘s recovery.
While most of the remarks focused on how the neighborhood stadium and the baseball academy
would help youth, a few of the guest speakers tried to connect the stadium to the longevity and
well-being of the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood. For example, council person Cynthia Morrell
talked about the stadium in the context of the neighborhood‘s six year recovery process. She
praised Pontchartrain Park residents and reminded them of how far the neighborhood had come
since their early meetings that took place in November 2005 when many of them were still
displaced due to Katrina. She stated ―It has been a bumpy road and I didn‘t always think it was
going to happen but we have always worked as a team.‖
The re-development of the Gentilly Woods Shopping Center is another indicator of the
neighborhood‘s recovery in the aftermath of Katrina. The nearby shopping center has been
closed for six years. Over two hundred residents from the Gentilly Woods and Pontchartrain
Park neighborhoods met on June 30th, 2011, at the New Orleans Baptist Seminary to hear the
proposals from two business groups hoping to redevelop the shopping center. The two proposals
included one from Walmart, a multinational retail corporation, which proposed building a
116,000-square-foot store on the site, and the other presentation was from the Michaels Group,
which proposed a combination of smaller-scale retail and mixed-income apartments. Each group
provided a thirty minute presentation that was followed by questions gathered from the audience.
Residents were not allowed to speak directly to the representatives from the two businesses (each
resident was given a small note-card and could submit their questions to a facilitator who would
read the question aloud).
Although residents could not speak directly to the representatives, their questions and feedback
indicated that they were somewhat in favor of the Walmart proposal and strongly opposed to the
possibility of mixed income housing and mixed used developments. Many of the questions (side
conversations, and under the breath mumblings) were so critical of the mixed income housing
plan, that the Michaels Group representative felt the need to justify or defend the proposal.
Below is an excerpt from the from the June 30th, 2011 field-notes:
One of the representatives from the Michaels group approaches the podium (after
realizing that the mention of mixed income housing is not sitting well with the
residents) and states: ―Affordable housing is usually given a bad reputation but this
would be housing for people who are working, people who work at hospitals and
university.‖ He also reminds the residents that the housing would target the elderly
population in the neighborhoods. He states: ―At least half of the units would be
reserved for elderly residents.‖
Although the residents did not have direct input in the decision process (the New Orleans
Redevelopment Authority scored and voted on proposals), it was clear from the
22
discussion among those in attendance, that Walmart was the desired choice for the
neighborhood. The questions during the Q&A session suggested that residents were
adamantly opposed to any proposal that would bring housing to the current site. Several
note cards read by the facilitator suggested collaboration between the Pontchartrain Park
Community Development Corporation and the Michaels group. The PPCDC serves as the
planning, business and financial interface between development and planning
organizations and the residents of the Pontchartrain Park community. The organization
has recently acquired lots from New Orleans Re-development Authority (NORA) to build
new homes in the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood. In August 2011, The New Orleans
Redevelopment Authority voted on an accepted Walmart‘s proposal for the Gentilly
Woods site.
Theme 2: Opportunities for Residents
The Pontchartrain Park Improvement Association continues to offer residents opportunities in
the way of home improvement and small grants. During a meeting on June 18, 2011, two
representatives from the Salvation Army discussed a program that was designed to help
Pontchartrain Park residents weather-proof their homes. The Salvation Army has two
components to their program. One program was designed to help residents with existing homes
while the other program was for newly constructed homes (homes currently being built by the
Pontchartrain Park Development Corporation). The two programs are called Green Home
Sustainability and Ecobasket. Over the last, three years, the Salvation Army has been working
closely with the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood. A resident in the audience, who looked to be
in his early forties, stood up and vouched for the Salvation Army sponsored programs. He stated:
―This program is great and these are real dollars. If you leave this meeting please share this
information with your neighbors.‖ Another resident echoed a similar sentiment: ―This is another
great opportunity for us. We have to take advantage and it is keeping us in the spotlight.‖
In addition to the Salvation Army programs for homeowners, local and state politicians
continue to offer the residents resources, information, and financial support for local events.
For example, during a July meeting for the Pontchartrain Park Improvement, Jared Brossett,
state representative for district 97, encouraged residents to prepare for the upcoming
hurricane season. He urged the residents to ―get a plan together and follow the mayor‘s lead‖
as there would be a mandatory evacuation for any storm that was a category three or higher.
He also announced to members of PPIA that if elderly residents in the neighborhood needed
assistance that they should feel free to call his office so that he could help in getting them
registered with the 311 program (city assisted evacuation program). Jared Brossett also
continued to make financial contributions to the neighborhood. While attending an August
2011 Pontchartrain Park Improvement Association meeting, I found out that Jared Brossett
(along with J.P. Morrell) had both contributed funds for the neighborhood‘s Fourth of July
celebration.
Farrah has also been contributing to the project by attending conferences and presentiong
research results. In August 2011, she submitted an abstract entitled ―Examining the Recovery of
a Post-Katrina New Orleans Neighborhood‖ to the Association for Applied and Clinical
Sociology annual meeting. Her presentation will discuss some of the findings from her ongoing
23
ethnographic observations of neighborhood organizations in Pontchartrain Park. The conference
will be held in New Orleans in October 2011.
The original grant proposal also stated that members of the ULTRA-Ex team would ―visit‖ and
―engage‖ minority students at local universities located in New Orleans. In March 2011, she
coordinated a student seminar that featured one of the principal investigators from the ULTRAEx team. The brown bag seminar was sponsored by Xavier University‘s Across the Curriculum
Thinking (ACT) committee. Xavier University of Louisiana is a historically black college and its
Across Curriculum Thinking (ACT) Program seeks to promote critical thinking about vital issues
from an interdisciplinary perspective. Roughly seventy students and faculty members across
several disciplines (sociology, biology, political science and history) attended this event. PI
Gotham discussed the current data collection strategies and preliminary findings of the ULTRAEx research project.
Hollygrove
Earthea Nance and Mallikharjuna (Reddy) R. Avula have undertaken extensive field research in
the Hollygrove neighborhood since 2009. Their work has included compiling and reviewing
journal articles on network analysis, neighborhood diversity, resilience, vulnerability, adaptive
management, social-ecological systems, urban-ecological systems, coupled human-natural
systems, land use, etc. They have also compiled abstracts summarizing selected journal articles,
reviewed existing studies, data sets, and research findings re: the Hollygrove neighborhood.
Over the last two years, they have made contact with residents, local scholars, and others
working with the Hollygrove neighborhood; developed a participant observation protocol for
gathering ethnographic information during neighborhood meetings; and observed numerous
meetings of the Hollygrove Neighbors Association. Based on their extensive ethnographic field
observations, they have developed a database of secondary neighborhood data (76 rows x 50
columns) and conducted a comparative analysis of indicators of resilience, vulnerability, and
diversity.
Hollygrove is a working class neighborhood with less than a century of history. Hollygrove is
bounded by Palmetto Street to the north, the Jefferson Parish Line to the west, South Claiborne
Avenue to the south, and South Carrollton Avenue to the east2. The area was once swamp land
in the New Orleans suburb of Carrollton. Annexation of Carrollton in 1874 to New Orleans
coupled with transit-oriented development during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century
drove working class residential development into this low-lying part of Carrollton, giving
Hollygrove its present character. Many one and two family residences were built during this
time. Like Pontchartrain Park and the Lower Ninth Ward, the major development of Hollygrove
took place during the Post-World War II period. The architecture consisted mainly of small
suburban tract homes, many with carports3. By 1965, there was very little vacant land left in the
Hollygrove neighborhood.
2
UNOP District 3: Recovery Planning of Hollygrove and Dixon. The City of New Orleans.
2006.
3
Repetitive Loss Area Revisit # 5: Hollygrove Neighborhood. The City of New Orleans. 2010.
24
Over time, Hollygrove became a predominantly African-American neighborhood. By 2000, the
neighborhood population (7222) was 95 percent African-American (Table 1). Hollygrove had
become one of the city‘s poorest neighborhoods, with nearly 28 percent of its residents living in
poverty, and it was among the higher crime neighborhoods in the city. Apart from its poverty
and crime, Hollygrove has been home to several noted musicians who grew up in the
neighborhood.
A naturally low-lying topography combined with a poor drainage system has made Hollygrove
highly vulnerable to flooding, even during ordinary rainfall events. Storm water backs up and
overtops the banks of Hollygrove‘s Monticello Drainage Canal, a canal that drains much of the
city but that typically only overtops in Hollygrove, causing frequent flooding of streets and
homes. During Hurricane Katrina, failure of the city‘s levees and breaching of the 17th Street
Canal resulted in complete flooding of the neighborhood – by only a few feet in some places and
more than 10 feet in other places. Since its development, Hollygrove has faced drainage
problems in spite of a series of improvement projects in the 1960s. Fortunately, the US Army
Corps of Engineers, in collaboration with the city‘s Sewerage and Water Board, have been
implementing the 1996 Congressionally-authorized Southeast Louisiana Urban Drainage
Program (SELA) in New Orleans. These drainage improvements were not of the scale necessary
to prevent the flooding of Hurricane Katrina, in which approximately 50 percent of the housing
stock received substantial damage (i.e., exceeding 50 percent of market value) and 20 percent
received major damage. The extended time of inundation and severe degree of damage to homes
and infrastructure made it very difficult for residents to return to Hollygrove in a timely fashion.
The catastrophe effectively ended the previously active neighborhood organization known as the
Hollygrove Improvement Association. With a broken network, very little resources, and little
response from external agencies, the residents who were able to return regrouped as the
Hollygrove Neighbors Association. The new neighborhood association now administers all parts
of the neighborhood except the area between Palmetto Drive and Airline Highway, an area
known as Palm-Air. Residents of Palm-Air are more affluent compared to the modest residents
in the rest of Hollygrove. The Hollygrove Neighbors Association is actively involved in the
recovery of the neighborhood. Though Hollygrove has been unable to attract the support of a
broad variety of external agencies and non-profit foundations to help rebuild their neighborhood,
there has been some external networking. Hollygrove Neighbors Association and other internal
neighborhood organizations (including Trinity Christian Community (TCC) and CarrolltonHollygrove Community Development Corporation (CHCDC)) have established strong bonds4
with AmeriCorps, AARP, Habitat for Humanity, Project Homecoming, New Orleans Food and
Farm Network (NOFFN), Tulane University, and the University of New Orleans to effectively
address neighborhood recovery. TCC, a faith based organization, has been active in the
neighborhood since 1967 and was important in bringing AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity,
Project Homecoming, and individual volunteers to the neighborhood to help with gutting and
rebuilding damaged homes. Efforts of these organizations and individuals and their linking and
4
Hawkins, R. and Maurer, K. 2010. Bonding, Bridging and Linking: How Social Capital
Operated in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The British Journal of Social Work, 40,
1777-1793.
25
bonding helped Hollygrove to achieve its present status of disaster recovery. A close look at our
ethnographic observations will explain the roles, linkages, and bonds of these organizations in
disaster recovery.
Ethnographic observations
As part of the ethnographic observations, Earthea and Reddy have conducted observations of
three neighborhood association meetings conducted quarterly and one livable community project
meeting held at Hollygrove Market and Farm. All meetings were well represented by all sections
of the neighborhood, including residents, local small- and medium-sized businesses, faith-based
organizations, academic institutions, elected and appointed government officials, and other
community-based organizations such as walking clubs, the neighborhood watch association, etc.
Elderly people dominated the meetings with a high number of interactions and positive
suggestions for the betterment of their neighborhood. Apart from neighborhood meetings,
Earthea and Reddy have also conducted field observations at Conrad Park and on several of the
neighborhood‘s main streets where they observed frequent interactions among people of
different ages, genders, and other characteristics. Most among these observations were
interactions between groups of elderly people.
The majority of the disaster literature considers elderly people as merely a vulnerable population
group. Ethnographic observations suggest that, based on the overwhelming participation of
elderly people in community meetings and neighborhood associations, the elderly residents
perceive themselves to be the guardians of their neighborhood. They exhibit solidarity,
responsibility, and commitment in carrying out this task. Long-time senior residents of
Hollygrove help others not only to know the history, culture, and heritage of their neighborhood
but also the intra- and inter-community networks that existed prior to the disaster. This
knowledge encourages other stakeholders to participate in the neighborhood‘s development in
general and in disaster recovery in particular. Hollygrove has a rich cultural background with
dense family networks and has been home to several noted musicians. Though its present status
is tarnished because of the high crime rate, this heritage brings a sense of pride to present
generations.
Soul Steppers walking clubs (initiated by AARP) are primarily intended to make people
healthier. In Hollygrove, these clubs are not only making people healthier; they are also infusing
community activism by providing opportunities for residents to get to know each other, become
friends, share their experiences, and experience unit. A sense of unity fosters a relatively
increased sense of safety among residents who live in the context of high crime. Presently, the
crime rate in Hollygrove is higher than the average crime rate of the city. In order to reduce the
crime rate, residents of Hollygrove in collaboration with AARP, Trinity Christian Community,
and Hollygrove Neighbors Association formed several crime watch groups that will collaborate
under a neighborhood watch association to keep watch on their streets and observe and report
any suspicious activity. These groups also: a) organize safety walks to spread crime awareness
among the residents; and b) explain the existing crime situation and suggest possible safety
measures. The unity brought about by intra- and inter-community networks and crime awareness
programs has contributed to a relative increase in residents‘ sense of safety.
26
Neighborhood organizations as anchors of disaster recovery
Earthea‘s and Reddy‘s ethnographic observations suggest that bonding and linking with several
local and extra local organizations has been beneficial to the Hollygrove neighborhood. The
collaboration of TCC, AmeriCorps, and neighborhood residents resulted in the rebuilding of
nearly 2500 homes. TCC Director Kevin Brown earned a national public service award (the top
public service award from the Department of Justice) for his ―outstanding service to rebuild New
Orleans in general and Hollygrove in particular.‖ Organizational collaborations also created
Hollygrove Market and Farm (HM&F), a micro urban farm that has become not only a local
economic vehicle but also an education and demonstration center for sustainable farm practices
in disaster recovery. Neighborhood revitalization is taking place with active involvement of
residents and effective collaboration of internal and external organizations. Significant ongoing
projects include the AARP Hollygrove Livable Community Project5 and the Tulane Hollygrove
Greenline Project6. The Livable Community Project promotes safe growth and aims to help
places build their own capacities, such as building a community garden, forming a neighborhood
watch association, or establishing a walking club. The project ensures that residents are the
principal stakeholders and empowers residents to work together on projects that benefit their
neighborhood. AARP is also working with residents to create crime watch teams and crime
awareness programs. Tulane‘s Greenline Project will complement AARP‘s project by improving
Hollygrove‘s physical landscape.
Carrollton-Hollygrove CDC and HGN are two formal neighborhood organizations actively
involved with residents in rebuilding their neighborhood. Carrollton-Hollygrove CDC, like other
CDCs, is involved in developing affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households,
and in promoting neighborhood revitalization and recovery. HGN is involved in community
organizing, information sharing among residents and various community organizations, and in
developing opportunities for residents to connect with each other around recovery and rebuilding
issues. Hollygrove is one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city and received less publicity
after Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, its population return rate is greater than the Lower Ninth
Ward and Pontchartrain Park return rates. Neighborhood activism and collaborative efforts by
community organizations have helped create a positive collective identity.
Innovation in revitalizing the community
Several academic institutions such as Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Lafayette
Academy and other schools have been involved in the disaster recovery of the Hollygrove
neighborhood. Each of these institutions have studied the neighborhood thoroughly and offered
suggestions and recommendations for disaster recovery. City Center of Tulane University, along
with its collaborators, has been involved in several projects that include architectural design of
Hollygrove Market and Farm, and several bus stops. They have also been involved in the
5
AARP Livable Communities Project available at http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/livablecommunities/
6
Hollygrove Greenline Project available from Tulane City Center,
http://www.tulanecitycenter.org/programs/projects/greenline
27
development of the Greenline Project which is intended to make a neighborhood amenity out of
a divisive infrastructural corridor by creating a series of places for neighborhood activities and
urban farming. All the structures are intended to become landmarks of the neighborhood and to
serve as catalysts for further innovation. Once implemented, the Greenline project would become
a city level monument for the neighborhood.
The Center for Hazards Awareness, Research, and Technology (CHART) at the University of
New Orleans (UNO) has been engaged with the neighborhood for a long time by advocating
appropriate disaster mitigation practices. CHART also implemented a drainage area analysis of
Hollygrove to help FEMA reduce the future costs of repetitively flooded properties. Lafayette
Academy Charter School has created separate class rooms for Hollygrove students in order to: 1)
give special attention to Hollygrove students; and 2) facilitate safe transition once the Dunbar
School is reconstructed in Hollygrove. The Louisiana Recovery School District announced its
plan to reconstruct Dunbar School at Hollygrove neighborhood. Presently the work is under
progress. The contributions of these academic institutions in revitalizing Hollygrove stand as
examples of innovation for other neighborhoods in the city of New Orleans.
Disaster scholars have long observed that religious and faith-based organizations typically
expand their traditional roles of providing communities of worship to providing other services
such as shelter during pre-and post-emergencies. These institutions also act as resource centers
for emergency response and can become centers for future community organizing. Observations
in Hollygrove closely match these scholarly observations. St. Peters AME Church in Hollygrove
is one such institution that has been acting as both a religious congregation as well as a
community organizing center before and after Hurricane Katrina. On Sundays people gather for
prayers. Occasionally, residents and other stakeholders of the Hollygrove neighborhood gather
for their neighborhood meetings. The initiative of this church in offering space for Hollygrove
Neighbors Association to conduct their regular neighborhood meetings shows the major
influence of religious institutions on disaster recovery.
Trinity Christian Community (TCC), a faith based organization, has been instrumental in the
community‘s development before and after Hurricane Katrina. TCC has been involved in day-today community development activities, such as: 1) improving the educational qualities of
students; 2) care giving and livelihood support; and 3) reconstruction of houses damaged by
Hurricane Katrina. TCC has spearheaded the coordination of NGOs and volunteers
reconstructing damaged houses, and was also involved in creating a Community Emergency
Response Team for addressing future disasters. Today, TCC is considered a backbone for
Hollygrove neighborhood because of its tireless involvement in the development of Hollygrove.
St. Peters AME Church and TCC have each played an important role in the disaster recovery of
Hollygrove neighborhood.
Lower Ninth Ward
For the neighborhood level analysis in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Tulane-Xavier Center for BioEnvironmental Research partnered with Henrik Ernstson and Thomas Elmqvist of the
department of Systems Ecology / Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University. Dr.
Ernstson visited New Orleans and the study neighborhood in March 2011 to provide feedback to
28
Joshua Lewis (a CBR research assistant) in his ethnographic work. Ernstson and Elmqvist
arranged for Josh to become a doctoral student at Stockholm University beginning in June 2011.
After initially exploring the potential application of a Social Network Analysis to complement
the ethnographic work, the research team is instead coalescing around a more qualitative
methodology utilizing theory and methods from social movement studies and frame analysis.
What follows is a synthesis of some of ethnographic findings and reflections on the research
process.
Neighborhood-level analysis in the Lower Ninth Ward: An evolving approach
Josh Lewis attended a variety of community meetings in the Lower Ninth Ward during 2010 and
early 2011. Due to the institutional focus of the CBR and other programmatic linkages (such as a
related grant with the McKnight Foundation) meetings regarding navigational infrastructure and
environmental land-use planning were particularly well represented. Josh also attended meetings
of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, Citizens Against Widening the Industrial Canal
(CAWIC), the Mississippi River Gulf-Outlet (MRGO) Must Go Coalition, and held informal
meetings with key informants within civil society organizations in the neighborhood.
Additionally, Josh closely followed the development of a collective civic project at the so-called
Bayou Bienvenue platform, tracing the civic networks associated with its construction and
evolution as a space for framing and social learning regarding an ecological restoration project
currently being developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Josh took recorded video and
audio in formal planning meetings, and took notes in civic meetings. In meetings with
informants, Josh held open-ended interviews, reminding the informants that they only need to
include information that they deemed appropriate for the context. It was stated up front that no
interviews would be directly quoted or attributed to the subject, and that the interviews were
intended to help garner a broad qualitative understanding of dynamics within civil society, and
inform subsequent research methodologies.
Further, Josh gathered a database of printed text documents, digital material, maps, academic
literature, and media reports relevant to the neighborhood‘s historical trajectory and recovery
post-trauma. These observations and artifacts were circulated within the research team at the
CBR and Stockholm University. The conversations generated by this collective data exploration
form the basis of this account. Ann Yoachim of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law
and Policy was an important partner for Josh in validating certain findings in the ethnographic
exploration.
Background Information and Current Status of Recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward
The 2005 levee failures that flooded the Lower Ninth Ward were catastrophic in nature.
Generally speaking, other neighborhoods experienced floodwaters rising gradually over a
number of hours, while in the Lower Ninth Ward water moved laterally and rapidly as the storm
surge poured through Industrial Canal‘s eastern wall just north of Claiborne Avenue. The
combination of high flow velocity and flood depth proved particularly devastating. The force of
the water caused some houses to completely collapse, and pushed others off their foundations.
Even areas in Holy Cross, above sea level, were flooded for extended periods of time. The scale
of destruction in the neighborhood attracted extensive media coverage. Images of the severe
29
damage near the main levee breaches, the narratives of survivors, and discussions on the wisdom
of rebuilding the community were picked up by media outlets worldwide.
The return rate in the Lower Ninth Ward is the lowest of all New Orleans‘ neighborhoods. Like
many of New Orleans‘ neighborhoods, some residents have struggled to navigate the
bureaucratic requirements of relief programs like Road Home. These issues are sometimes
compounded by the loss of crucial documents in the flood, and in some cases, the lack of formal
documents altogether. Approximately 30 percent of the homeowners participating in the Road
Home program have opted to sell their properties and relocate, the highest of our three study
neighborhoods (see table). Areas north of St. Claude Avenue had a lower return rate (24 percent)
than the higher and slightly more affluent Holy Cross neighborhood (55 percent). Extensive
demolitions north of St. Claude Avenue have cleared hundreds of lots, while other homes remain
empty and neglected since the flood.
Like Pontchartrain Park, the scale-crossing networks built by neighborhood associations and
non-profits have been integral to the recovery process. Hundreds of non-profit organizations
have been active in the neighborhood since 2005. Neighborhood-based groups include A
Community Voice (formerly ACORN), Lower Ninth Ward NENA, All Congregations Together,
Common Ground, Lowernine.org and the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (HCNA), to
name only a few. Each of these groups has pursued strategic partnerships with philanthropic
foundations, universities, faith communities, and formal NGOs. For the purposes of this report,
we will draw into focus the network anchored by the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association.
This will illuminate some of the dynamics within civil society since Katrina, and begin to
account for its influence on the overall recovery and resilience of the neighborhood.
A Relational Perspective on ‗Sustainable Restoration‘ in the Lower Ninth Ward
Here, we offer an ethnographic account of the civic networks and processes in which the Holy
Cross Neighborhood Association (HCNA) is embedded. Our observations suggest that the Lower
Ninth Ward‘s high media visibility in the aftermath of Katrina, and the HCNA‘s pre-existing
partnerships in academia and environmental civil society were important in the following ways:
1) ensuring the continuity, resilience, and trajectory of the neighborhood association itself, 2) the
emergence of a localized discourse around environmental sustainability, and 3) legitimizing and
influencing specific rebuilding projects managed by large NGOs. We understand the
particularities of these partnerships to be crucial in understanding the possibilities and constraints
faced by civil society groups in the neighborhood over the past six years. In general, Holy Cross
is built on higher ground, is more racially diverse, and is more affluent than the Lower Ninth
Ward as a whole. The HCNA is also a racially mixed body, though our observations suggest that
whites, homeowners, and middle-class professionals tend to be overly represented. The bulk of
our observations and conversations took place either in formal HCNA meetings, or public
forums in which HCNA representatives participated.
The work of the HCNA is important for several reasons. First, the HCNA demonstrates the
influence of civic groups in organizing and mobilizing collective action among residents within
the neighborhood. Second, the HCNA has also played a major role in building heterogeneous
networks that attract financial and human capital and mobilize relevant expertise. Third, the
neighborhood organization has helped create and maintain social ties that enable and further its
core agenda. There is much discussion on the importance of social capital and scale-crossing
30
network ties in the resilience literature. Our findings can corroborate this observation in a
discreet way - it appears that the social and professional ties of members of HCNA were
important in its continuity after Katrina, and have to some extent helped to shape the nature of
certain recovery initiatives to which it is associated.
New funding sources and institutional partners in the first two years after Katrina inserted greater
heterogeneity into the group‘s discourse, and enabled the HCNA to spawn an entirely new
institutional form to complement its existing capabilities, cultivate previously inaccessible forms
of financial support, more seamlessly engage in the wider neighborhood, and engage in new
forms of collective action. These new activities have been coordinated primarily by the Center
for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED), a 501c-3 non-profit organization
founded by HCNA members in a partnership with Tulane University and the international NGO
Mercy Corps. A board of directors governs HCNA and its officers are subject to periodic
election by association members. On the other hand, the CSED operates independent of electoral
constraints, with only board oversight. Currently, the CSED formally employs four full-time, and
two part-time employees, while hosting a variety of academic researchers and externally funded
temporary staff members through faith-based groups and federal programs like Americorps.
Despite its legal and institutional distinctions, the CSED‘s staff is primarily composed of
members of HCNA, and two of its last three directors have formerly served as president of the
HCNA. Loosely speaking, our observations indicate that HCNA‘s activities center around
maintaining a public forum for residents in association meetings (weekly until mid 2009, now biweekly), articulating community concerns in the media and political sphere, and providing a
mechanism for contesting certain economic and infrastructural developments. The CSED has
taken on a more ecological orientation in its discourse and its projects, sponsoring an experiment
in social learning at a local wetland, promoting energy efficiency, and working to attract
businesses and NGOs with ‗sustainability‘ as a guiding principle in their initiatives.
Since its founding in 1980, the HCNA has been remarkably effective in contesting the
construction of a new navigational lock on the adjacent Industrial Canal waterway. The HCNA
built a network of partnerships through its opposition to the lock project, repeatedly enrolling the
Tulane Environmental Law Clinic to provide legal services, and building alliances with
academicians, design professionals, and national environmental NGOs including the Sierra Club
and the National Wildlife Federation. The law clinic has filed multiple lawsuits against the
government on the behalf of the HCNA, citing issues with the EIS process. These lawsuits have
placed the HCNA‘s agenda in opposition to those of the Port of New Orleans and its clients,
some of the most powerful economic and political figures in the State of Louisiana. While the
legal arguments against the lock project are quite specific, residents vocalize a diversity of
objections to the project, including concerns over traffic congestion, noise pollution, and impacts
on property values.
Some residents have voiced in public meetings the claim that the initial clearing of the new lock
site by the US Army Corps of Engineers helped to undermine the canal‘s floodwalls during
Katrina, an accusation partially corroborated by noted civil engineer Robert Bea in his expert
testimony in a related class-action suit (Robinson v. United States). On more than one occasion,
we observed residents going so far as to suggest that the US Army Corps of Engineers created an
artificial breach in the canal floodwall, serving the double purpose relieving structural pressure in
other levee locations, and ‗clearing out‘ the neighborhood most vehemently opposed to the new
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lock. Without speaking to the validity of such an accusation, the fact that such a perception exists
in certain circles indicates a boundary in the public discourse around the Corps of Engineers, and
the tension between flood control and navigational infrastructure.
Our observations suggest that HCNA‘s mobilizations against the lock project are important in
understanding post-Katrina civic life in two key ways. First, the antagonism and wariness sowed
in part through the HCNA‘s activities between 1990-2005 with regard to the Army Corps of
Engineers and its client, the Port of New Orleans, was important in shaping discourse around
flood control, risk perception, and economic development in the years after Katrina. Secondly,
the alliances HCNA developed within academia and the environmental justice community can
perhaps partially explain the emergence of local sustainability initiatives over the past six years.
The ―sustainable restoration plan‖ endorsed by the HCNA in 2006 was developed by key
participants in the lock project disputes, and the alliances with groups like the Sierra Club and
Tulane University led to the involvement of actors from environmental groups beyond the
traditional ‗environmental justice‘ cohort, including a number of design professionals and
architects. For example, Global Green, a large and well-resourced environmental group focusing
on green building worked hand in hand with the HCNA to build half a dozen LEEDs certified
homes and an apartment complex in Holy Cross. The project was named in honor of an
HCNA/CSED activist after her death in 2009.
The Global Green project often lays claim to enrolling the participation of the actor Brad Pitt in
the neighborhood‘s recovery activities. Pitt worked with others to ‗scale up‘ the Global Green
concept, rolling out the Make it Right Foundation in 2007. Make it Right is in the process of
constructing up to 150 LEEDs certified single-family homes along Tennessee street, on a tract of
lots close to the 2005 breach site. The architectural forms of the homes themselves have received
much debate, alternately praised and derided for their peculiar form, elevated foundations, and
bright colors. Make it Right‘s director has specifically sited the HCNA and CSED as imperative
in the project‘s inception and development. The participation of Mr. Pitt has also led to many
prominent figures and media outlets taking interest in the project. For example, former President
Clinton took part in the project‘s ground-breaking.
The HCNA/CSED network has undergone major readjustment over the past year. First, its
founding director, a long-time HCNA activist widely credited with the organizations continuity
after Katrina, passed away suddenly. Her passing occurred on a particularly significant morning,
on which a state level commission on coastal restoration was holding its meeting in the
neighborhood to in part tour the ‗sustainable‘ initiatives. Never had the commission met outside
of Baton Rouge previously. Next, its second director was tapped by mayor Mitch Landrieu to
head up the Coastal and Environmental Affairs office of the City of New Orleans. His departure
from the HCNA/CSED led to the hiring of a new director in 2010. The implications of these
transitions, discursively and materially, are only beginning to emerge.
The observation that financial resources and discourses are to some extent crystallizing around
environmental sustainability in the neighborhood‘s civil society leads us as researchers to ask
additional questions. Is the sustainability discourse becoming hegemonic in the neighborhood‘s
civil society more broadly? What other perspectives are marginalized in the rush to finance and
tout eco-conscious projects? Further reflection and research is needed. After all, the research
team itself includes actors in the HCNA/CSED network. The strong resonance of the
sustainability perspective in our own civic engagement and social networks leaves much of the
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research group in a potentially problematic relationship to the ethnography process. Our work in
the future will strive to account for this potential pitfall by narrowing the focus of our inquiry,
while also developing a way to assess the contentedness of the sustainability paradigm.
Reflexivity in Research Design: Ethnography, Network Analysis, and Framing Analysis
Currently, Josh and Henrik are adopting and implementing a qualitative and reflexive approach.
Before we outline the current state of our approach, we will briefly review the events and
reflections that brought about our decisions. Tracing the dynamics of a reorganizing
neighborhood is dilemma-ridden task for researchers. In our case, a rapidly changing field
environment and impasses regarding the role of researchers in a historically marginalized and
traumatized neighborhood led to a slower and more deliberative research design phase than was
initially planned. See Alberto Melucci‘s 1996 work Challenging Codes for a more detailed
description of ethical concerns within collective action research.
Henrik and Josh began by conducting some initial preparation for a social network survey. This
involved a combination of observations at a variety of neighborhood association meetings, press
conferences, and formal planning meetings. This served to identify informants from different
sectors of civil society, who then provided useful feedback as we developed a large database of
active civic groups, and broad categories regarding the nature of their work and their
constituencies. Collecting secondary data like documents and media reports complemented this
database. The specific phenomenon the SNA project was to explore was a collection of civil
society organizations developing projects and programs framed by their participants as
experiments in sustainability and community resilience - contributing to the 'green rebuilding' or
'sustainable restoration' of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood.
As we began developing a social network questionnaire, a number of obstacles emerged. The
first major challenge occurred in late 2009 when our primary key informant suddenly passed
away. Further, after reflecting on the ethical implications and methodological challenges of
administering a network survey that asked organizational leaders to reveal their strategic
alliances while they were engaged in a contentious recovery planning process, we decided that a
formal network survey was poorly suited to the space in question.
The SNA approach would have taken a quantitative and structural perspective, seeking to explain
surface-level dynamics by uncovering patterns of relations, flows of information between actors,
and locating the network position of each group in the study. We recognized the limitations
inherent in such an approach in our study area - namely - our observations indicate that
collaborative networks change rapidly, the personnel composition of groups are often highly
unstable, staffed through temporary positions from groups like Americorps, foundation
fellowships, and academic researchers. Further, we found that many of the leaders and
individuals we predicted to be highly mobilized and central in the network either 'burned out' and
became less involved, passed away, or utilized their connections to seek out employment with
formal authorities or leave the city altogether, taking their institutional knowledge and unique
patterns of social ties with them. While this may be an interesting finding in itself, it also
underscores the potential futility of conducting an ambitious network analysis program in a
dynamic setting with only limited personnel. The network perspective did prove to be a fruitful
way to begin exploring our study neighborhood, and some of the databases we generated will
remain useful and relevant in our final analysis.
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At present, Henrik and Josh are in the preliminary stages of developing an approach bringing
together elements of social movement theory and frame analysis in particular. This qualitative
approach involves collecting interviews with representatives from neighborhood organizations
identified in our network survey, incorporating document analysis, ethnographic observations to
trace the emergence of environmental ―frames‖ articulated in the public statements,
programmatic themes, and on-the-ground projects of various civil society groups. While the
ethnographic work comes to certain conclusions regarding these processes, publication of the
work will require a more robust empirical base. Fieldwork will commence in November 2011,
with an intention to develop a manuscript for submission by April 2012.
Project Findings
Overall, while the data collection and analysis for the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project are
ongoing and not complete, we want to suggest several tentative findings. First, our research
suggests that the resilience of a particular social or ecological system only makes sense in the
context of past and present susceptibility to and experiences with disasters and other trauma.
The accumulation or degradation of resilient properties both before and after a trauma influences
the social vulnerability of a social or ecological system. The resilient properties of
neighborhoods and cities depend on historical trajectories, including the political economy of
resources flows, socio-economic and environmental background factors, and past impacts of
disasters. Time frame and scale of analysis interconnect with each other as well as the nature of
the threat. The role of cultural systems, mass media, socio-legal regulations, financial flows and
networks that extend well beyond communities are important in influencing and determining
vulnerability and resilience. We recognize that that there are multiple pathways to neighborhood
resilience. A neighborhood may not experience "population resilience" (e.g., reach pre-trauma
population) but may experience "transformative resilience" to the extent that new residents are
able to learn and reorganize, and adjust to post-trauma conditions. Thus, the concept of
resilience points toward the need for improved theoretical orientations and methodological
approaches to understand and explain the reciprocal effects and feedbacks between human action
and urban ecosystem change at local, regional, and global scales.
Second, the determinants of resilience and the timeframes of post-disaster recovery derive from
the formulation and implementation of public policies. Resilience is not a static property or
feature that happens by accident; nor is resilience the result of "natural" ageing processes such as
in natural ecosystems. Rather, some systems may produce resilience to particular types of
disturbances (but not others) while producing new vulnerabilities to system-wide breakdown and
collapse. Like vulnerability, resilience is a product of planning and policy implementation at
multiple levels of political organization. Policies pertaining to urban and suburban development,
poverty and homelessness, irrigation and water resources control, ecosystem management, and
so on are crucial to determining the resilience and vulnerability of cities and regions. Moreover,
past decisions and policy outcomes pertaining to human settlements and natural ecosystems can
have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities. Just as pre-trauma socioecological conditions can constrain and limit the pace and trajectory of post-disturbance
resiliency, post-trauma developmental patterns can feed forward to affect the future resilience or
vulnerability of different urban neighborhoods and urban ecosystems.
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Third, early findings from the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project suggest that explaining the
dynamics of neighborhood and urban resilience requires a thorough understanding of past,
current, and future land-use transformations. These transformations are rooted in past and
present policies that state actors have implemented at the local, state, and federal government
levels. Exploitative land-use pressures, driven by socio-economic processes, have been the
catalysts of urban ecosystem change, a finding that corroborates the findings of the Central
Arizona LTER. The transformation of the landscape with levees, canals, floodwalls, and real
estate development in the swamps, in turn, generated new risks and increased vulnerabilities to
hurricanes and flood hazards.
A related point is that resilience and vulnerability are not antonyms. Rather, urban ecosystems
exhibit both vulnerable and resilient qualities that are oftentimes products of past and present
cross-scale interactions (see Gotham and Campanella 2011 article in Ecology and Society).
Three past cross-scale interactions linking local actions with federal policies and socio-legal
regulations were important. First, the Flood Control Act of 1965 authorized the Army Corps of
Engineers to create a series of joint federal, state, and local partnerships in which governments
designed and built levees, floodwalls, and other flood control structures to protect the region
from hurricane storm surges. While there were major alterations in these arrangements and
designs over the decades, the overall intent was to encourage private investment in building
urban infrastructure in the wetlands. Second, the establishment of the National Flood Insurance
Program (NFIP) (P.L. 90-448) in 1968 served as a major socio-legal mechanism to urbanize the
wetlands by subsidizing private insurers to write policies in areas at risk for flooding and
hurricane damage. Third, the building of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) navigation
canal in the 1960s operated as a conduit to dramatically increase salinity in the marshes and
thereby devastate the wetlands.
The figure below, compiled by Rich Campanella, shows land-loss in the region.
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Before closure in 2008, MR-GO had contributed to the erosion of 20,000 - 65,000 acres of
wetlands, as much as 100 of the 500 square miles of wetlands that had previously stood to the
southeast of New Orleans, an area that was in the bull's eye of Hurricane Katrina's storm surge
that engulfed the city and region. All of these 1960s developments interacted with the long-term
degradation of surrounding wetlands through a combination of upstream dams and river
channeling, and oil and gas exploration in southern Louisiana.
In sum, the confluence of suburbanization, growth pressures, and ecological degradation of the
surrounding wetlands in the New Orleans region after the 1960s created long-term
environmental, social, and economic problems involving complex feedback loops. Past federalstate- and local government interactions encouraged suburban development in the swamps and
marshes that increased vulnerability of human settlements and infrastructure to storm surge
events and flooding. Thus, Hurricane Katrina was a trigger event and not the actual cause of the
massive flooding and subsequent property damage that affected the New Orleans region. New
Orleans's poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls collapsed under moderate
hurricane conditions due to the feedback effects of past cross-scale interactions. The
transformation of the regional landscape with levees, canals, floodwalls, and real estate
development in the swamps disguised risk in the built environment and generated future
vulnerabilities to hurricanes and flood hazards. Thus, cross-scale interactions and their effects
on urban vulnerability and resilience have a historical trajectory. Socio-ecological processes
36
interact over temporal and spatial scales simultaneously suggesting that we must understand
cross-scale interactions in historical as well as spatial context.
Finally, data collection and analysis from the project suggests that the extension, intensification,
and acceleration of cross-scale interactions in the aftermath of Katrina reveal the connections
between resilience and vulnerability in social-ecological systems. By ―cross-scale interactions‖
we mean influences, connections, and networks among institutions, government agencies, and
networks to facilitate the flow of recovery information and resources. Cross-scale interactions
imply (1) the extension or stretching of disaster recovery activities across borders; (2) the
intensification, or magnitude, of recovery activities, and flows of investment and resources to
encourage rebuilding; (3) the velocity, or speed, of flows, activity, and interchanges to accelerate
post-disaster recovery and rebuilding. Charting the extension, intensity, and velocity of crossscale interactions involves identifying how and to what extent traumatic events affect patterns
and processes of both vulnerability and resilience within and across urban ecosystems.
Cross-scale interactions are the communicatory and fiscal infrastructure through which
government agencies and organizations circulate and transmit information and resources to
facilitate post-disaster recovery and rebuilding. Rather than viewing urban ecosystems as either
resilient or vulnerable, our work demonstrates that they embody both resilient and vulnerable
components. Vulnerability and resilience are an interplay that presuppose each other—a duality,
not a dualism. They are products of cross-scale linkages of policies, socio-legal regulations,
networks and organizations that facilitate some forms of action and decision-making while
discouraging others. Cross-scale interactions can alter organizational couplings, leading to
adaptive couplings that promote resilience, adjustment, and innovation, but can also reinforce
maladaptive couplings, which in turn can produce vulnerabilities to future stress and trauma.
Important, the project examines the extension, intensification, and acceleration of cross-scale
interactions as major forces shaping patterns and processes of social-ecological vulnerability and
resilience in the New Orleans urban ecosystem. Cross-scale interactions are forms of
information and resource exchange that operate through time and space. How social-ecological
processes interact over temporal and spatial scales is one of the key factors in the resilience and
vulnerability of different parts of a social-ecological system, whether it is an urban community or
a natural ecosystem. The usefulness of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience lie in the
attempt to separate extra-local patterns and regularities from the context-laden urban
environment, and reveal the reciprocal feedback effects of human action and urban ecosystem
transformation. Different socio-legal regulations and government policies have helped constitute
and shape various cross-scale linkages that both promote resilience and vulnerability in the New
Orleans urban ecosystem. To assess these relationship empirically, team members have
developed a conceptual framework to examine the impact of government policies, programs, and
other forms of activity on the transformation of organizational couplings in a dynamic urban
ecosystem. Below is our conceptual framework:
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Traumatic events and disasters alter organizational couplings in social-ecological systems by
extending, intensifying, and accelerating cross-scale interactions. By creating and extending
linkages among diverse agents and institutions, cross-scale interactions have enabled the
different components of the New Orleans urban ecosystem to take advantage of opportunities,
leverage resources, and learn from activities happening in other components. Cross-scale
interactions have linked social and technical networks to activate and sustain processes of selforganization and social learning for innovation and progressive transformation. Trust,
cooperation, and sharing of information and resources have been necessary to implement policies
and management actions to build knowledge, incentives, and learning capabilities into
institutions and organizations for post-Katrina recovery and rebuilding.
At the same time, analyses demonstrate that cross-scale interactions can produce maladaptive
couplings or negative feedbacks that perpetuate social inequalities and reinforce socio-spatial
vulnerabilities to stress and trauma. Cross-scale linkages that promote and legitimize
exclusionary policies, environmentally destructive growth practices, and exploitative land-use
decisions degrade resilience to disasters. Currently, contested property rights, land claims, and
land-use planning processes both complicate and problematize the adaptive capacity of
communities in the metropolitan region and could jeopardize long-term efforts to restore the
wetlands ecosystem. Furthermore, if social and political institutions do not promote more
equitable and sustainable forms of development, it is less likely that communities will be able to
adapt and respond effectively to future trauma. How institutions define and allocate property
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rights and develop water- and land-use planning practices is important for community adaptive
capacity as they influence access to resources, wealth, well-being and livelihood.
Finally, the integrated vulnerability-resilience perspective suggests a multi-scale approach to
understanding the drivers of urban susceptibility and adaptive capacity in urban ecosystems.
Social and natural systems are deeply interwoven and their dynamics of change are uneven and
long-term. Patterns and processes of resilience and vulnerability involve complex relationships
among political, socio-economic, and cultural elements that vary across a range of temporal and
spatial scales. Cross-scale interactions shape the socio-economic and institutional conditions that
constrain and enable effective response and adaptation to stress and perturbation for socialecological systems. Yet, researchers lack knowledge of how cross-scale interactions can
stabilize some social-ecological components, degrade and/or improve other components, and
affect the pace and trajectory of urban ecosystem transformation. Wars, economic and financial
crises, major shifts in food and fuel prices, technological changes, and land use policy are large
in magnitude, spatially extensive, and transform social-ecological systems over long time
periods. Infrequent events can radically alter trends and disrupt prevailing cross-scale
interactions to the detriment of some communities and benefit of other communities. Individual
cases may be unique and our ability to generalize or predict may be severely limited.
Understanding how cross-scale interactions affect extensive, pervasive, and subtle change is
therefore one of the most important challenges for urban ecosystem science.
Training and Development
Under the guidance of Professor Earthea Nance, doctoral student M. Reddy Avula has engaged
in the following training, development, and mentoring activities to over the last two years:
Reviewed the National Science Foundation standards for qualitative research.
Reviewed the scholarly literature on qualitative comparative analysis.
Completed and passed ―Responsible Conduct of Research‖ training (a series of online
courses).
Faculty member provided weekly one-on-one training and development to doctoral
student researcher in ethnographic data gathering, qualitative analysis, literature review,
and journal article preparation.
Doctoral student will gain teaching skills by delivering a guest lecture in Dr. Nance‘s
hazard planning course.
Team researcher Professor Michael Blum has worked with four graduate research associates and
a senior research associate to undertake ecological aspects of the project. This work represents
two categories of research activities. The first activity, involving Ms. Brittany Bernik and Ms.
Rebecca Hazen, has centered on identifying sources of available ecological data for the New
Orleans metropolitan area. ―Ecological data‖ is defined as government, museum, academic, and
private organizations‘ records of species occurrences (at all taxonomic levels) and relative
abundances with corresponding temporal and geographical information. The taxonomic scope of
records gathered by Brittany and Rebecca is all encompassing, in that records are being obtained
for all forms of organismal diversity. As noted above, records are being obtained for both animal
39
and plant assemblages. Consideration is also being given to both human commensal and noncommensal species. This has resulted in the development of skills for archiving, organizating,
and processing of species inventory records for the New Orleans region in Microsoft Excel
format and other formats compatible with statistical programs used by members of the ULTRAX project team. Both students are gaining valuable research skills by contributing to the
statistical analysis of compiled ecological data; attending and participating in regularly scheduled
project meetings; providing regular updates to project participants on progress-to-date; and
contributing to the development of reports, presentations and peer-reviewed articles
incorporating ecological data and analyses.
The second activity has centered on the development of a city-wide urban forest inventory. Three
students and a senior research associate (as listed above) assisted with completion of this work.
All individuals involved with this work either had previous training or received trained in
techniques for inventorying urban vegetation. Plot inventories completed in Fall 2010 and
Summer 2011 following protocols similar to those used by the CAP and BES LTERs. As with
the first activity, this has resulted in the development of skills for data archiving, organization,
and processing. Individuals involved in this activity are also gaining valuable research skills by
contributing to the statistical analysis of compiled survey data; providing regular updates to
project participants on progress-to-date; and contributing to the development of reports,
presentations and peer-reviewed articles incorporating ecological data and analyses.
During 2009 and 2010, Kevin Gotham worked with an undergraduate Tulane student, Ellyn
Crane, as the director of her honors thesis. Her research examined the impact of government
policies and programs on the post-Katrina redevelopment process in several New Orleans
neighborhoods. She interviewed neighborhood residents and leaders. She attended bi-weekly
meetings to discuss current data collection progress and plans for future data collection and
analysis; assisted with and transcribed interviews; and analyzed the interview data for patterns
and processes of neighborhood redevelopment. The plan was to interview approximately 20
participants. The collection interview data focused on asking ―process‖ questions to illuminate
how people construct meaning about events and activities, and how social structures and local
context shape action and decision making. Process questions lend themselves to the use of
interpretive inquiry to seek out information about intentions, motivations, constraints,
opportunities, and consequences of social action. Thus, Gotham and Crane used a loosely
structured interview protocol that contained a set of general and specific questions. Intensive
semi-structured interviews gave participants room to articulate their experiences, to speak about
past events and happenings, and elaborate at length on different points. This interviewing format
also allowed Gotham and Crane to probe for clarification when needed, and helped create an
opportunity to uncover rich data.
To aid documentation and develop interviewing skills, Kevin Gotham instructed Ellyn Crane to
audio tape-record all interviews with the consent of the respondents. She transcribed the
recordings and assigned pseudonyms to each interviewee to protect their confidentiality. She
was sensitive to issues engendering trust and rapport with respondents, and was aware that
asking residents about the post-Katrina rebuilding process could bring about significant emotions
and tensions into our interactions with the respondents. Thus, she allowed the participants to
control what they wanted to have taped in order to give them authority over what they think
40
should be included in the research or not. To facilitate analysis, the transcribed interviews were
coded in themes such as "perceptions of the impact of organizations on the rebuilding process,"
"perceptions of the impact of government policies and programs," and "perceptions of
neighborhood change since the disaster."
Outreach
Outreach activities are an integral aspect of the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex Project. We are
actively promoting teaching, training, and learning by including graduate students and
undergraduate students as participants in the research activities. Senior personal are partnering
with Tulane‘s Center for Public Service (CPS) to incorporate research into learning and
education via community service activities. Working with CPS, ULTRA-Ex researchers are
forging partnerships with community organizations such as the Lower Ninth Ward Center for
Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED). Its mission and purpose is to stimulate civic
engagement and restorative rebuilding, repopulate, sustain natural systems, assist community
leadership and preserve resources in New Orleans‘ Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Over the
last year, senior personnel and CPS have been collaborating to support community-based efforts
including providing assistance with service learning courses, developing service learning
pedagogy, and communicating opportunities for research and training to students.
Moreover, senior personnel have been encouraging undergraduate and graduate students to
present the results of their research at professional meetings and the activities of professional
societies, especially interdisciplinary societies. Overall, our multi-disciplinary and multiuniversity setting have enhanced the ability to synthesize research activities across diverse
disciplinary areas.
In addition, senior personnel are working to expand and redesign their courses to include
pedagogical, substantive, and thematic material that advances the research goals, agendas, and
interests of the overall research project. Undergraduate and graduate students at Tulane, Xavier,
and UNO are gaining exposure to interdisciplinary research, the importance of long-term
monitoring of urban ecosystem processes, and experience in database design, management, and
analysis.
The research team has established a cooperative agreement between Tulane and the U.S. Forest
Service. As noted above, the cooperative is intended to generate an inventory of the urban forest
of New Orleans, which will provide a range of educational opportunities as well as a basis for
long term ecological monitoring within the city. The survey is also intended to enhance the
ability of city managers to promote delivery of ecosystem services to New Orleans residents.
To broaden the participation of underrepresented groups, senior personnel are making efforts to
include students and researchers who are members of underrepresented groups as participants in
the research activities. To present research results and promote outreach, senior personnel have
attended conferences, created advertisements, made campus visits, and given presentations at
scholarly meetings that focus on underrepresented students. Over the last year, Kevin Gotham
has made visits to local HBCUs such as Dillard University and Xavier University to engage
students and bring attention to the important research opportunities that the New Orleans
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ULTRA-Ex project offers for underrepresented students. Team members and senior personnel
are also mentoring early-career scientists from underrepresented groups who may be interested in
submitting proposals to the NSF.
Overall, the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project is enhancing the infrastructure for research and
education through partnerships between Tulane University, Xavier University, and the
University of New Orleans (UNO). ULTRA-Ex efforts are catalyzing a transformation in
research and education by establishing new partnerships, networks, and a unique infrastructure of
discovery to contribute to the broader base of scientific knowledge regarding human-ecosystem
interactions and to benefit the New Orleans metropolitan community. In addition, the research is
having broad civic impact by directly supporting the civic-engagement efforts of project
participants, enhancing the content and fidelity of their findings, and having a multiplier effect in
terms of distribution. As our publications shows, new knowledge and discoveries about the
effects of trauma on urban ecosystems are benefiting society and inform scholarly debates by
illuminating new mechanisms by which post-traumatic stress manifests at the individual level.
By producing new knowledge on the impacts of trauma on urban ecosystems, this research is
having important practical applications to environmental decision making for the New Orleans
region and for urban ecosystems around the world.
C. Contributions
Contributions to Sociology, Ecology, and Geography Disciplines
New Orleans ULTRA-Ex ethnographic field observations in the three neighborhoods contributes
to understanding trauma and other disturbances as foreseeable manifestations of broader
political and socio-economic forces that shape urban ecosystems. Most sociological research
views disasters as discrete events that have short-term and long-term impacts on social and
ecological systems. In contrast, our findings suggest that disasters and related trauma are
outcomes of a combination of socio-economic, political, and environmental factors.
New Orleans ULTRA-Ex ethnographic field observations and other data contributes to
understanding the neighborhood level factors that influence variation in the pace and trajectory
of post-disaster repopulation. Findings suggest that the degree of neighborhood organization,
formal connections with external allies, and the presence of diverse social networks are
significant indicators of post-disaster neighborhood repopulation. Our ethnographic field
observations suggest that the slow return and uneven recovery of New Orleans neighborhoods
can be linked to the historical vestiges of concentrated poverty and residential segregation.
Poverty and racial discrimination impede resilience by contributing to socio-spatial isolation and
discouraging resource flows via formal and informal networks. Building resilient neighborhoods
depends on public policies to reduce poverty and segregation and strengthen organizational ties
and cross-scale networks.
New Orleans ULTRA-Ex research contributes to social science work that seeks to understand
political, institutional, and socio-economic drivers of vulnerability to disasters. Socio-economic
polarization, residential development in low-lying areas and flood zones, poverty, concentrated
disadvantage, racial and class segregation, and other factors are the major social producers of
vulnerability. Just as socio-economic arrangements and public policies can make some groups
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more vulnerable to disaster than others, vulnerabilities express and reinforce class and racial
inequalities. In line with current research, our findings suggest that low-income and poor people
suffer more than the wealthy and affluent when a major disaster hits. This finding corroborates
the work of sociologist Eric Klinenberg in his awarding winning book on the Chicago heat wave
of 1995. According to Klinenberg, low-income people and African Americans bore the brunt of
the negative consequences of the record temperatures due to poor housing conditions, inadequate
access to medical facilities, and less assistance from police, fire, and paramedics.
New Orleans ULTRA-Ex research contributes to geography and related spatial sciences.
Researchers are working to assess whether neighborhood repopulation trends, in addition to
being driven by pre-trauma social vulnerability, also vary by flood depth—a metric that
correlates well with the level of damage inflicted upon housing stock. That is, the deeper the
flood waters, the slower the repopulation of the neighborhood, a finding that few social scientists
have focused on in past research.
Our findings suggest that while social class is an important driver of post-disaster neighborhood
repopulation, the destruction caused by high water explains a substantial portion of
neighborhood recovery trends. Poor neighborhoods that suffered extreme flooding exhibit the
slowest population recovery rates; wealthier neighborhoods that were deeply flooded and
working-class neighborhoods that were lightly flooded are seeing intermediary return rates;
lower-middle class areas that evaded flooding are 90-95 percent back; and wealthy unflooded
areas are enjoying return rates of sometimes over 100 percent. The exceptions to these rules tend
to be public housing projects (demolished, amid controversy, to be replaced by lower-density
mixed income New Urbanism designs), or multi-family Section 8 housing that failed to reopen.
Regarding flood depth as a driver of recovery rates, this interesting finding corroborates with
past research by Piers Blaikie and colleagues who note that low-density housing development in
flood zones protected by levees create zones of vulnerability. Seen from this perspective, flood
defense infrastructures - systems of levees and floodwalls - are vehicles of high-intensity real
estate and land development that normalize and disguise risk in the built environment, proliferate
vulnerabilities, and conceal hazardous conditions and threats that can have a long incubation
period.
Our initial analyses contribute to ecology based on analyses that suggest that trauma can be a
major driver of social diversification in urban ecosystems. Scholars suggest that diverse systems
tend to be resilient systems because of the functional interdependency of components and
subunits. Since the Hurricane Katrina disaster, New Orleans has become a more diverse place
measured in income and ethnicity. We recognize that diversity is much more than a static
characteristic of a system at a single point in time (e.g., ethnic or racial composition of a census
tract). Rather, diversity reflects a variety of organizational linkages, vertical and horizontal
networks, and multifarious institutional capacities that collaborate to achieve common goals.
One hypothesized mechanism for New Orleans's enhanced diversity are increases in the
extension, intensification, and velocity (speeding up) of cross-scale interactions. These
interactions occur between the macro, meso, and micro levels and represent reciprocal feedback
loops that lead to increases in institutional, cultural, and social diversity. Macro (national) level
processes include policies, laws, and socio-legal regulations that promote post-disaster recovery
and rebuilding. Meso-level processes include the activation of NGOs, private foundations,
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NPOs, and so on to deliver aid and resources. Finally, at the micro-level, a variety of bottomup, grassroots actions taken by neighborhood coalitions, community-based organizations and
associations, housing activists groups, and so on interact with macro and micro level processes to
enhance diversity in the region. In turn, changes in institutional, cultural, and social diversity are
associated with changes in (1) forms of urban resilience and vulnerability, and (2) couplings
between human and natural systems.
Contributions to Urban Policy and Planning
Our research also makes a theoretical contribution to the fields of urban policy and planning. In
a 2010 paper, published in Critical Planning, Kevin Gotham and Richard Campanella develop
the concept of transformative resilience as a heuristic device and analytical tool to guide research
on the nature of system change, innovation, and creativity in the face of stress or trauma. In this
conception, resilient communities, cities, or regions do not just return to a pre-trauma state or the
status quo, but have the capacity to reinvent themselves with new relationships, modes of
organization, and networks. Our theorization directs attention to the ways in which regions,
cities, and neighborhoods may have particular kinds of social relationships, socio-economic and
demographic features (e.g., age of residents, levels of education, income and other heterogeneous
resources), and ties between social networks that can enhance the capacity for post-trauma
transformation. This emphasis on ―buffer capacity‖ or robustness in the face of changing
internal or external conditions eschews a notion of resilience as reaching an end-point or finale
and examines resilience as a non-linear and multidimensional process, a point that connects with
the research of Grimm, Redman, and colleagues with the Arizona LTER and Pickett and
colleagues with the Baltimore LTER. To evaluate resilience, in other words, we argue that one
must be able to identify the degree of pre-disturbance vulnerability or risk to the system, and the
degree of post-disturbance renewal, reorganization, and innovation.
We view transformative resilience as a heuristic device to guide research into the indicators,
properties, and drivers of post-trauma urban ecosystem transformation. In particular, the concept
directs attention to the ways in which different urban ecosystems can transform and innovate in
response to trauma. In this sense, transformative resilience suggests that urban ecosystems do
not just automatically respond or adjust to trauma but can learn from traumatic experiences to
reorganize and reinvent themselves in unique and distinctive ways. As a multidimensional
conceptual tool, transformative resilience assumes that urban ecosystems have a variety of
resilience elements and adaptive capacities that derive from the functional interdependence of
different units and subunits. Such a conception encourages us to think about different regions,
cities, and communities as forms of social organization constituted and reproduced by a
multiplicity of complex networks, formal organizations, socio-legal regulations, and interlinked
micro- and macro processes.
Based on our research in New Orleans, we develop a tentative research agenda and strategy
comprised of six basic elements to guide future scholarship on urban resilience. In particular,
our research agenda seeks to understand how the different social, economic, institutional, and
environmental subsystems of urban ecosystems interact and respond differentially to direct
traumatic events; how initial socio-ecological conditions constrain and limit the pace and
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trajectory of post-trauma recovery; and how post-trauma developmental patterns feedback to
affect the resilience of the different subsystems of urban ecosystems.
First, the concept of transformative resilience encourages us to think of urban ecosystems as
composed of complex, multi-scale, interconnected processes with powerful feedback effects that
promote some forms of resilience for some units, degrade other kinds of resilience, and produce
vulnerability to trauma for other units and groups. Thus, the accumulation or degradation of
resilient properties both before and after a trauma influences the social vulnerability of a social
or ecological system. The resilient properties of neighborhoods and cities depend on historical
trajectories, including the political economy of resources flows, socio-economic and
environmental background factors, and past impacts of disasters. The role of cultural systems,
mass media, socio-legal regulations, financial flows and networks that extend well beyond
communities are important in influencing and determining vulnerability and resilience. There
are multiple pathways to social-ecological resilience. An urban ecosystem may not return or
recover to its pre-trauma population but may experience "transformative resilience" to the extent
that new residents are able to learn and reorganize, and adjust to post-trauma conditions.
Second, the research agenda we outline suggests a need for improved theoretical orientations and
methodological approaches to understand and explain the reciprocal effects and feedbacks
between human action and urban ecosystem change at local, regional, and global scales. At the
supra-local level, national institutions, parliamentary laws and statutes, public policies, and
global flows and networks of activity can enable some groups to leverage material and cultural
resources to build resilience through collective action. Policies and socio-legal regulations can
also limit the effectiveness of adaptive governance and social-ecosystem management strategies,
and degrade the urban and ecological environment. Instances of urban resilience including
adaptive capacity and transformability would be seen as manifestations of a city‘s evolving
structural position in a national or global economy, global division of labor, or other extra-local
processes and geo-historical trajectories. In addition, reference to a city‘s location within
particular regional, socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts would explain the strength,
tenacity, or weakness of urban resilience. These extra-urban and regional contexts might be
further situated within a larger context of global-systemic processes and developments.
Third, a research agenda on transformative resilience would clearly identify the effects of human
actions and decisions on the pace and trajectory of post-trauma urban ecosystem recovery.
Resilience is not a static property of urban ecosystems; nor is resilience the result of "natural"
aging processes such as in natural ecosystems. Indeed, a fundamental difference between
ecological and social resilience is that ecological resilience flows from processes occurring in
nature whereas social resilience is a product of human action and social organization. A natural
ecosystem cannot change the laws of nature and physics whereas a city or region can lobby state
and federal officials for money, resources, and legal and policy changes for transformation and
reorganization. Social resilience is subject to human agents' conscious and strategic
interventions and manipulations. Moreover, past decisions pertaining to human settlements and
natural ecosystems can have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities. Just as
pre-trauma socio-ecological conditions can constrain and limit post-trauma resiliency, posttrauma developmental patterns can feed forward to affect the future resilience or vulnerability of
different urban neighborhoods and urban ecosystems.
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Fourth, an addition component of a research agenda would examine the ways in which policies
can affect the rate and extensiveness of post-disaster redevelopment by limiting choices,
discouraging some forms of decision-making, and encouraging other actions on the part of
individual households, businesses, and government agencies. Policies can set in motion longterm developmental trajectories through which various lock-in mechanisms – e.g., hierarchies,
networks, institutional patterns, power relations, and decision making – sustain and reinforce
dominant processes of urban development. At the same time, policies can perpetuate postdisaster traumatic conditions by promoting disinvestment, out-migration of people, or even
contribute to the emergence of what scholars call ―corrosive community” — that is, a consistent
pattern of chronic and destabilizing impacts to individuals and communities.
Central to this critical perspective is the idea that human actions, institutions, social policies, and
government laws and regulations can nurture some forms of resilience and undermine other
kinds of resilience. Thus, public policies and socio-legal regulations are powerful drivers of
social resilience. Consequently, some systems may produce resilience to particular types of
disturbances (but not others) while producing new vulnerabilities to system-wide breakdown and
collapse. Policies pertaining to urban and suburban development, poverty and homelessness,
irrigation and water resources control, ecosystem management, and so on are crucial to
determining the resilience and vulnerability of cities and regions.
Fifth, explaining the dynamics of transformative resilience requires a research design that
permits a thorough understanding of past, current, and future land-use changes. These
transformations are rooted in past and present policies that state actors have implemented at the
local, state, and federal government levels. In the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, for
example, degradation of the wetlands, erosion of barrier islands, destructive growth policies and
suburban development, and the construction of a weak and ineffective flood defense
infrastructure created patterns of disaster risk and vulnerability. As scholars know now,
Hurricane Katrina was a trigger event and not the actual cause of the massive flooding and
subsequent property damage that affected the New Orleans region after August 29, 2005. New
Orleans's poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls collapsed under moderate
hurricane conditions due to the multi-decade pursuit of economic growth and regional
development by government officials, developers, and other profiteering interests, even as
environmental conditions deteriorated and flood-protection engineering grew more challenging.
Exploitative land-use pressures, driven by socio-economic processes, have been the catalysts of
urban ecosystem change. The transformation of the landscape with levees, canals, floodwalls,
and real estate development in the swamps, in turn, generated new risks and increased
vulnerabilities to hurricanes and flood hazards.
Sixth, measuring and assessing resilience at the different scales - e.g., regional, urban, or suburban - requires a comparative research agenda to analyze different social units and processes
unfolding over time and space. Comparisons should aim to provide depth and breadth of
analysis to explain both similarities and differences in a range of cases (e.g. cities,
neighborhoods, regions). Thus, place (and time) matters in the study of urban resilience because
an analysis of why and how resilience develops will need to take into account where (and when)
it develops.
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Contributions to Human Resources Development
The ULTRA-Ex project contributes to human resource development by providing opportunities
for research, teaching and mentoring in science areas. The New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project has
provides an intellectual foundation and major impetus for the formation of a new networked
graduate program at Tulane University. Established in 2010, the Tulane University City,
Culture, and Community (CCC) doctoral program is housed in the department of Sociology and
the School of Social Work with participating faculty located in the School of Liberal Arts (SLA),
the School of Architecture, School of Law, School of Public Health, and the School of Science
and Engineering (SSE). The intellectual focus of the CCC program is unique in bringing
together interdisciplinary approaches in the social and natural sciences, social work, architecture,
law, humanities and applying them to understand a range of issues pertaining to cities, culture,
and communities. As a broad-based and integrative graduate education-research program, the
CCC addresses interrelationships between the physical environment, the built environment, and
social, economic, and political institutions and processes that shape urban areas.
The CCC's breadth of interdisciplinary study allows students considerable flexibility to develop
their training to individual research interests while providing a depth of disciplinary training for
those students who wish to pursue training in social work or sociology. By interconnecting
interdisciplinary and disciplinary education and training, the CCC faculty encourages graduate
students to select dissertation topics that offer the potential for a cross-disciplinary approach with
the Ph.D. degree awarded in ―Social Work – CCC,‖ ―Sociology – CCC,‖ or ―Urban Studies CCC.‖ The goal is to produce a well-trained cadre of professionals, social scientists, and
humanists who have a common vocabulary, and an integrated framework, with practical and
creative experiences to pursue careers in wide range of sectors: academic, governmental,
community, private, and public, or some combination. The first cohort of graduate students
matriculated in August 2011.
In short, a core ULTRA-Ex strategy is to encourage integration of research and education not
only through the CCC program but through institutional partnerships. The ULTRA-Ex project
reinforces and bolsters partnerships with local organizations and stakeholders with considerable
local participation, including formal and long-term collaborations with the HCNA/CSED, the
City of New Orleans, City Planning Commission, the Mayor's Office of Environmental Affairs,
and Office of Disaster Mitigation Planning). Josh Lewis‘ interaction and engagement with the
CSED, for example, has helped transform the way in which the Lower 9th ward has approached
its own recovery process and helped it develop a recovery focus of sustainability based on
translating sound science into policy and practice. In doing so, the CSED and other
neighborhoods have drawn attention to critical issues such as wetland loss, how recovery
resources are allocated, flood protection, infrastructure development, and regional sustainability.
In addition to these local collaborations, the ULTRA-Ex team has an established 5-year multicity international partnership promoting science and policies for urban sustainability through the
Stockholm Resilience Centre.
In this capacity, New Orleans ULTRA-Ex plays a catalytic role in developing a series of national
and international partnerships and collaborations to identify strategic opportunities to build new
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research networks that extend out from New Orleans to encompass diverse cities, organizations,
and institutions around the world. In sum, through partnerships with international organizations
and community stakeholders, the ULTRA-Ex project aims to contribute to the human-resource
base for science and technology, including the base of understanding among those who are not
themselves scientists or engineers.
Faculty members have delivered additional training in urban ecosystem analysis through
undergraduate courses designed around ULTRA-Ex activities. Kevin Gotham‘s Urban Policy
and Planning course, for example, presents an overview of urban policies in the historical context
of their development, illustrates the links between theory and research, and aims to foster a
critical understanding of policy and urban ecosystem development. The course examines
different meanings and definitions of urban policy, how policies are evaluated, and how power
relations and social structures constrain policy making and implementation. Through
assignments and discussion, students learn to identify the key processes and policies that have
affected the pace and trajectory of urban ecosystem development; analyze a variety of policies
from different disciplinary perspectives; investigate the positive impacts and negative
consequences of various policies on cities and built environment; and learn how to design a
research project.
Monthly New Orleans ULTRA-Ex meetings provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary
interaction and information exchange through results-based presentations and discussions of
future projects and plans. Attendance ranges from 10 to 20 people per meeting and includes
faculty members, graduate students, and community partners. Smaller groups of ULTRA-Ex
researchers assemble for various projects. Ethnographic field observation meetings have been
held to foster collaborations among New Orleans ULTRA-Ex scientists doing research
neighborhood recovery and rebuilding efforts. Another group researching the coupling of
human and natural systems has met over the year to examine changes in the valuation of
ecosystem services and changing perceptions of flood risk and vulnerability.
Contributions to Resources for Research and Education
The New Orleans ULTRA-Ex study of the impact of trauma on social diversity and ecological
diversity contributes to resources for research and education in three major ways. First, our
setting within and between Tulane University and other New Orleans institutions enhances the
ability to conduct, communicate, and integrated research activities. Faculty members have
expanded their courses to include a consideration of trauma. The multi-disciplinary courses
taught in the new CCC program are good examples of integrative science in action. Graduate
students are introduced to interdisciplinary theory and empirical research, the importance of
long-term data collection, as well as experience in data analysis and research management.
Second, social and ecological diversity represent a conceptual nexus for integrating social and
ecological research. Diversification characterizes all social species and patterns of organization.
In the case of natural ecosystems, researchers have demonstrated that the development and
dynamics of spatial heterogeneity regulate flows and cycles of critical resources within a variety
of ecosystems (for an overview, see Pickett et al 2001). In the case of humans, social diversity
and related terms such as differentiation and morphology have always been a central focus of
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sociology, political science, and geography. Thus, our project employs diverse scholars, data
sources, and methods to understand the reciprocal connections between diversity and trauma.
Third, understanding the effects of trauma on ecological and social diversity directs attention to
the ways in which wars, natural disasters, extreme events, and other catastrophes can affect the
allocation of critical resources, including natural, political, socio-economic, and cultural
resources. All societies allocate critical resources on the basis of rank hierarchies and social
differentiation. Unequal access to and control over political, economic, and cultural resources
reflects and reinforces social inequalities, patterns of spatial segregation, and differential life
chances. As we point out, wealth, power, status, knowledge, and territory are socio-cultural
hierarchies that are critical to patterns and processes of human ecological systems.
Contributions Beyond Science and Engineering
The New Orleans ULTRA-Ex project contributes to public understanding of the drivers and
negative consequences of trauma on social-ecological systems. Cross-scale interactions are the
major forces shaping patterns and processes of social-ecological vulnerability and resilience in
the New Orleans urban ecosystem. Cross-scale interactions are flows and exchanges of
information, resources, and capital that cross scales in space and time. How social-ecological
processes interact over temporal and spatial scales is one of the key factors in the resilience and
vulnerability of different parts of a social-ecological system, whether it is an urban community or
a natural ecosystem. The usefulness of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience lie in the
attempt to separate extra-local patterns and regularities from the context-laden urban
environment, and reveal the reciprocal feedback effects of human action and urban ecosystem
transformation.
The conceptual framework developed by the New Orleans ULTRA-Ex team has been useful to
assess the impact of government policies, programs, and other forms of activity on the
transformation of organizational couplings in a dynamic urban ecosystem. Hurricanes and other
extreme events, combined with explosive growth of urban and suburban areas, have created a
situation that leaders view with increasing concern across the United States. We believe that the
publication and communication of our research results will enhance policy-makers‘ ability to
address water-related environmental problems in the U.S. South. New Orleans ULTRA-Ex
scientists are working to communicate these results to community stakeholders.
D. Conference Proceedings
Kevin Fox Gotham. ―Sustainability for Whom and for What Purpose?‖ Regional Spotlight
Session (Las Vegas). Sustainable Las Vegas? Environment, Quality of Life, and Urban Living in
the 21st Century. American Sociological Association (ASA) Meeting. Las Vegas, NV. August
22, 2011.
Mike Blum, , Kevin Fox Gotham, John McLachlan, Doug Meffert, Richard Campanella, Farrah
Gafford, Earthea Nance, Mallikharjuna R. Avula, and Wayne Zipperer. ―Reconsidering the New
49
Normal: Trauma, Vulnerability, and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans.‖ Ecological
Society of American (ESA) Annual Meeting. Austin, TX. August 10, 2011.
Invited Roundtable. "Re-Constructing the City: A Conversation with Kevin Fox Gotham."
Sponsor: Society for the Anthropology of North America. Organizers: Julian B. Brash and
Aimee M. Cox. Chair: Jeff Maskovsky. American Anthropological Association (AAA) Meeting.
New Orleans, LA. November 19, 2010.
Kevin Fox Gotham, John McLachlan, Richard Campanella, Mike Blum, Farrah Gafford, Earthea
Nance, Mallikharjuna R. Avula, and Wayne Zipperer. "Urban Trauma and Social-Ecological
Resilience: Insights from the New Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area (ULTRA) Project."
American Anthropological Association (AAA) Meeting. New Orleans, LA. November 19, 2010.
Kevin Fox Gotham, John McLachlan, Richard Campanella, Mike Blum, Farrah Gafford, Earthea
Nance, Mallikharjuna R. Avula, and Wayne Zipperer. "Urban Trauma and Social-Ecological
Resilience: Insights from the New Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area (ULTRA) Project."
Urban Affairs Association (UAA) Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA. April 18, 2011.
Doug Meffert, Kevin Fox Gotham, John McLachlan, Richard Campanella, Mike Blum, Farrah
Gafford, Earthea Nance, Mallikharjuna R. Avula, and Wayne Zipperer. "Urban Trauma and
Social-Ecological Resilience: Insights from the New Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area
(ULTRA) Project." Resilience 2010 Conference, Tempe, AZ, March 2011.
Mike Blum, Doug Meffert, Kevin Fox Gotham, John McLachlan, Richard Campanella, Farrah
Gafford, Earthea Nance, Mallikharjuna R. Avula, and Wayne Zipperer. "Urban Trauma and
Social-Ecological Resilience: Insights from the New Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area
(ULTRA) Project." Ecological Society of America 2011 annual meeting (Austin, TX), special
symposium on urban stewardship. Nature Proceedings
(http://precedings.nature.com/documents/6246/version/1) DOI:10.1038/npre.2011.6246.1
Kevin Fox Gotham. "Urban Trauma and Social-Ecological Resilience: Insights from the New
Orleans Urban Long-Term Research Area (ULTRA) Project." March 2, 2011. Across Thinking
Curriculum Brown Bag series. University Center Ballroom. Xavier University.
Gotham, Kevin Fox. "Interdisciplinarity, Civic Engagement, and Graduate Education."
Presentation at "Walking a Fine Line Scientists, Experts, and Civic Engagement: A Symposium
in New Orleans." November 4, 2010. Dillard University. Organizer: Amy Lesen.
Kevin Fox Gotham. "Disaster, Inc.: Privatization, Marketization, and Post-Katrina Rebuilding."
Workshop on the Political Economy of New Orleans. September 10, 2010. Tulane University.
Richard Campanella regularly lectures on topics relevant to this NSF research, based on his
research over the past fifteen years. Relevant presentations since the start of this project include:
Plenary Speaker, American Planning Association Delta Urbanism Conference, New
Orleans, April 12, 2010
Invited Presenter, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, March
30, 2010
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Guest Lecturer, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, February 9, 2010
Invited Presenter, Macalester College Civic Engagement Forum, New Orleans, January
15, 2010
Guest Lecturer, Cartographie et Société Urbaine, Université Paris 12 - Val de Marne,
France, December 4, 2009
E. Publications (2010 - 2011) and Products
Gotham, Kevin Fox, and Richard Campanella. 2011. ―Coupled Vulnerability and Resilience: The
Dynamics of Cross-Scale Interactions in Post-Katrina New Orleans‖ Ecology and Society 16 (3):
12. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04292-160312. May 2011.
Gotham, Kevin Fox, Richard Campanella, Josh Lewis, Farrah Gafford, Earthea Nance,
Mallikharjuna R. Avula). "Reconsidering the New Normal: Vulnerability and Resilience in
Post-Katrina New Orleans" Global Horizons: The Journal of Global Policy and Resilience. 4(2):
2011
Gotham, Kevin Fox, and Richard Campanella. 2010. "Toward a Research Agenda on
Transformative Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities for Urban Ecosystems." Critical
Planning. Volume 17, Summer 2010.
Ernstson H, S van der Leeuw, CL Redman, DJ Meffert, G Davis, C Alfsen, and T Elmqvist.
2010. ―Urban Transitions: On Urban Resilience and Human-Dominated Ecosystems.‖ AMBIO
Published On-line first (DOI: 10.1007/s13280-010-0081-9)
Extensive GIS database of numerous social and landscape datasets about pre- and post-Katrina
New Orleans.
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