The Disneyfication of New Orleans: The French Quarter as Facade in a Divided City

The idea of a “Disneyfied” New Orleans is not new. Walt Disney, referring to the city's Bourbon and Royal streets, once remarked, “Where else can you find iniquity and antiquity so close together?” Sharing the assessment of the local author Harnett Kane that the French Quarter, or Vieux Carré, “means New Orleans to the outside world,” Disney added New Orleans Square, a cleaner, shinier replica of the city's most noted district, to his southern California theme park in 1966. New Orleans leaders, developers, and preservationists, meanwhile, were producing an urban space that, if not as controlled as its Disneyland counterpart, nevertheless invited comparisons.1 The identification of New Orleans with its original center largely explains why Americans were so disconcerted by the hidden city that floated to the surface in Hurricane Katrina's wake. Beyond the famed French Quarter and the oak-canopied St. Charles Avenue streetcar line lay a deeply troubled community. New Orleans had long cultivated an alluring image by restoring distinctive architecture and promoting culture and revelry, so for many it came as a shock to see thousands of agonized and visibly poor African Americans huddled outside the city's convention center and the Superdome after fleeing their submerged homes. Even longtime residents were taken aback by the scenes of suffering. Following Katrina, the journalist Adam Nossiter deftly captured the paradox of that selectivity: “You could live in a kind of dream-state in New Orleans, lulled into ignoring the crumbling houses you drove past, and their destitute inhabitants.” Katrina laid bare the persisting relevance of race and poverty that locals and tourists had long skirted.2