With the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching on Aug. 29, The Associated Press recently sat down with New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, to discuss the storm, the anniversary and the city’s future.
Landrieu says that after near-death experiences there’s a tendency to want life to go back to exactly the way it was before. But before Katrina, the city was struggling with both the post-9/11 tourism slump and a historically dwindling population, he says.
“We’re going to ask ourselves whether the city was perfect the day before the storm or whether or not we had problems,” Landrieu says. “And the fact of the matter is that New Orleans was a descending city before the storm hit us, that we had, for lots of different reasons … a city that in 1960 was bigger than Houston and Atlanta but that on Aug. 28, 2005, was now smaller than both of them and getting smaller.”
A decade after the storm, Landrieu says the city is moving in the right direction. More people are moving into New Orleans and property values are going up, he says.
“The city of New Orleans, through all of the difficulties, through all of our imperfections, through all of the things that we have done wrong, has finally started to get it right. And we are now an ascendant city,” he says. “While we still recognize that we haven’t gotten close to being perfect, we’re in a much, much better position today.”
Tourism and oil and gas development are two of the largest sectors of the city’s economy. But tourism jobs often don’t pay well, and fluctuations in the energy market can be volatile. Landrieu points to various possibilities to diversify the economy, such as expanding port operations. He said that project needs “massive investment” from the federal government. The state could also become an expert in managing water similar to the way the Netherlands has, or become a medical center with the construction of two new massive health care centers.
“Not only are we going to use that to take care of indigent folks and to train doctors, but also to do massive research,” he says.
Read the full story, in which Landrieu also talks to The AP about the coastal erosion threat to New Orleans, crime in the city and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments.
