Residential Dynamics in the Wake of Katrina

Abstract

The increased racial and ethnic diversity experienced by the United States in recent decades has vividly transformed this nation's urban landscapes. In New Orleans, Louisiana this transformative process was dramatically enhanced and accelerated by the disruptive impact of Hurricane Katrina, a tropical storm that devastated many of the area's residential neighborhoods. The displacement and turmoil brought on by this event, and the rebuilding efforts that followed, generated a residential geography that varied considerably from the one that existed prior to the storm. This chapter builds upon earlier work that investigates the impacts these processes had on the changing levels of residential segregation evident among racial and/or ethnic groups in New Orleans from 2000 to 2010. Empirical analysis entailed the measurement of two dimensions of segregation evident among Non-Hispanic whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Measures of residential exposure were decomposed in order to investigate the relative impacts of metropolitan-wide compositional change and intra-urban redistributive change on segregation among the four groups. Irrespective of media reports suggesting otherwise, New Orleans did exhibit very modest forms of residential integration during the decade. However, results also suggest that some groups within New Orleans continue to exhibit “ethnic (or racial) self-selectivity,” a form of residential behavior that concentrates these groups residentially. This chapter provides compelling evidence that residential landscapes across New Orleans continue to be impacted by complex forces operating at both the neighborhood and metropolitan scales.