New Orleans: A Typical or Prototypical City?

New Orleans is similar to other cities in the United States in many ways, including its infrastructure, struggles with poverty, and the many corporations that are widely seen throughout the nation. New Orleans is also very unique to any other city in the world, a major reason why tourism is such an important flow of revenue here.

Many cities seek to emulate New Orleans culture, particularly the cuisine. In Indiana where I am from, restaurants boasting New Orleans cuisine can be found all around the cities of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. During Mardi Gras, parties and special deals pop up all around town drawing in huge crowds of people wearing beads, drinking Hurricanes, and eating crawfish and jambalaya. Of course, there are also so many aspects of New Orleans that other places just can’t emulate. While you may be able to order a Hurricane in Indiana, you certainly can’t get it to-go. You’ll also never find the unique blend of cultures that New Orleans also has to offer because of its rich history.

None of these unique features of New Orleans, however, is why I would consider New Orleans a prototypical city. I would describe New Orleans as a prototypical city because of its geographical location and susceptibility to the effects of climate change. In this way, it can be a great resource for other cities facing similar issues. In particular, they can look at the city’s rebuilding efforts since Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans has been described as a resilient city and it has been argued that New Orleans has bounced back even better than before Katrina. Major gentrification efforts have taken place to beautify parts of the city. There are also some fantastic progressions in historic preservation within the city to help protect New Orleans’ unique architecture and history. Another thing worth mentioning is the city’s urban agriculture programs. While urban agriculture has become more and more popular across the United States in recent years, New Orleans has several programs in place to encourage and facilitate urban agriculture. It is for these reasons that I would consider New Orleans a prototypical case. New Orleans can be a very important case study for other cities recovering from natural disaster.

New Orleans can also be seen as a cautionary tale. New Orleans is such a unique city that people from all over to experience, but it is also a city facing several problems and challenges. Poverty is an issue that the city still needs solutions to address. Since Hurricane Katrina, the housing rates have increased, adding even more financial burden to low-income residents. New Orleans is also known for its high crime rate. When I first visited New Orleans a couple years ago with my friends I was warned about being careful of certain areas of town, not to be in the French Quarter at night, or even better, be back in our room before night. We were warned about muggings and fights breaking out on Bourbon Street and many more. Thankfully, we didn’t experience anything major beyond a minor fight and some hassling from a local, but New Orleans remains a dangerous city in need of improvement.

In these aspects, New Orleans faces the same challenges related to poverty and crime of a typical city. New Orleans finds itself struggling between the pros and cons of gentrification, where the lower-income residents find themselves suffering from its effects and the middle and upper-class find themselves benefiting from it.

New Orleans poverty is also an important discussion when looking at it from the prototypical point of view concerning Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a significant financial hardship for low-income residents without the means to evacuate the city and unable to bounce back as quickly as those with more of a financial cushion.

I think the best ways to obtain information on New Orleans is both a historical and ethnographical case study because it would highlight the two things that make it so unique – it’s historical significance and its people that make the city what it is. A historical case study would help show how New Orleans evolved into the city that it is today. It would provide insight into how a city developed in such a vulnerable geographic location and how that lends to what it has grown into. An ethnographical case study of New Orleans is important to be able to grasp the social aspect of New Orleans, which is something so imperative to explaining how tourism has made parts of the city thrive and caused other parts to lag behind economically. It also provides insight to how a natural disaster impacts residents’ lives, but also the aspects that draw people in or causes them to stay.

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