An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans

As Hurricane Katrina's surge filled the bowl-shaped metropolis of New Orleans, the simple geography of rising water came face-to-face with the complex human geography of a nearly three-hundred-year-old city. Whose homes were flooded, in terms of race, ethnicity, and class, became the subject of national discussion. This article describes how those residential patterns fell into place beginning in colonial times, and how they were affected by Katrina's flood. Travelogues testify to the extraordinary diversity of early nineteenth-century New Orleans. “No city perhaps on the globe,” wrote one visitor in 1816, “presents a greater contrast of national manners, language, and complexion, than does New Orleans.” Marveled another in 1835, “Truly does New-Orleans represent every other city and nation upon earth. I know of none where is congregated so great a variety of the human species.” “What a hubbub!” gushed another visitor, “what an assemblage of strange faces [and] distinct people!”1