Marla Nelson

Planning, Population Loss and Equity in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Abstract Shrinking, slow-growth and fast-growth cities have different opportunities and constraints. This paper uses New Orleans following the severe flood damage from the 2005 hurricanes as a case study to investigate the challenges to developing equitable and effective plans in a city with significant population loss. By addressing four elements that are necessary for effective planning in depopulated areas—strategies for targeted investment and consolidation; alternatives for underused areas; mechanisms to reintegrate abandoned parcels; and plans for infrastructure and service provision—we argue that the lack of effective tools was a pivotal impediment to effective planning.

Young Professionals as Ambivalent Change Agents in New Orleans after the 2005 Hurricanes

After the 2005 hurricanes, newcomers arrived in New Orleans to help rebuild the city. The influx of one identifiable group, young professionals and postgraduates, raised hopes and concerns that New Orleans would gentrify. Based on semi-structured interviews with 78 young and mid-career professionals, this paper examines how the young professionals approached an ambivalent situation where they were working to rebuild a better city while retaining its distinct cultural qualities, given that their presence itself contributed to the cultural change. They reconciled these tensions with an appreciation for localism that, for newcomers in particular, was expressed through knowing and responding to longtime residents instead of working against the social displacement that their presence could facilitate.

Chains and Ladders: Exploring the Opportunities for Workforce Development and Poverty Reduction in the Hospital Sector

In this article, the authors investigate the potential of hospitals to offer low- and semiskilled workers employment and advancement options.This study uses the job chains approach to measuring economic development impacts devised by Persky, Felsenstein, and Carlson to compare hospitals with three other industries highly concentrated in central cities and examines the practical challenges facing workforce development professionals. The findings suggest that growth in hospital employment has the potential to outstrip the impact of growth in accommodations, legal services, and securities and commodities on the well-being of low-income workers and should prompt economic development practitioners to take the sector more seriously as a locus for attention and investment. To maximize welfare gain and distributional equity, economic development policy makers must accompany investments in health care—based economic development both with strategies to promote skills attainment and credentialing among low-paid health care workers and with formal strategies to facilitate upward movement.

Are Hospitals an Export Industry? Empirical Evidence From Five Lagging Regions

Hospitals make substantial contributions to local and regional economies through the purchase of goods and services and the employment of large numbers of workers. In addition, research hospitals are a key component of the knowledge-based economy supporting an experienced and educated workforce and originating and transferring knowledge and innovation. Despite their importance, hospitals have been understudied from an economic development perspective. The lack of attention is, in part, because of the perception of health care as a “nonbasic” or locally serving activity that has little impact on driving a metropolitan areas economic development. This article uses patient-origin data from the 2004 American Hospital Directory to determine the magnitude of Medicare exports from 62 hospitals in five slow-growth or lagging metropolitan areas. This research indicates that hospitals are substantial contributors to the economic base of these regions and identifies characteristics of top exporting hospitals.

Rethinking Agglomeration Economies and the Role of the Central City The Public Accounting Industry in Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul

This article investigates the unique locational attributes central cities are purported to have and the importance of agglomeration economies in intra-metropolitan site selection via a locational analysis of the public accounting industry in the Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul regions. Relying on data from a telephone survey of public accounting offices and interviews with public accounting executives and industry experts, findings suggest that the agglomeration argument has been overstated in explaining the industry’s location and that the traditional conception of agglomeration economies as confined to the urban core is spatially restrictive.

Using Land Swaps to Concentrate Redevelopment and Expand Resettlement Options in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Although many researchers frame post-disaster reconstruction as an opportunity to build safer communities less vulnerable to natural hazards, widespread land use change and relocations are rare in the United States. Residents often resist relocation and attempt to recreate the city as it was before the disaster. In this study, I examine the potential of land swaps to encourage post-disaster redevelopment that is more concentrated and less vulnerable to hazards, while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. This article is based on a case study of an innovative land swap program developed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by a nonprofit housing organization, Project Home Again (PHA). PHAs land swap program concentrated redevelopment during a time of uncertain population return and expanded resettlement options for nearly 100 low- and moderate-income households devastated by Hurricane Katrinas floodwaters. I describe the operation of PHAs land swap program and identify three conditions that can increase the viability and impact of land swaps in other disaster recovery settings: the incorporation of land swaps into housing recovery policy; cross-sector collaboration in the implementation of land swaps; and coordination with public or quasi-public land banks. Takeaway for practice: Land swaps can be a useful tool in disaster recovery by helping to guide redevelopment while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. Increasing the range of relocation and resettlement tools available to planners is essential as repeated extreme weather events, sea level rise, and coastal erosion threaten the habitability of more and more cities and communities.

Moving to a shrinking city? Some suggestive observations on why college-educated professionals came to New Orleans and why they stayed

The 2010 Census showed population increases in urban core neighbourhoods in US shrinking or legacy cities. Influenced by Florida’s creative class theory, municipal leaders in shrinking cities have sought to attract and retain creative and college-educated residents as a revitalisation strategy and implemented amenity-based policy initiatives. Nevertheless, when compared with strong market cities, weak market cities have fewer amenities and less robust job markets. Why college-educated professionals would choose to live in cities with weak job markets and declining services is not well explained. Based on findings from two sets of interviews conducted five years apart with college-educated professionals living and working in New Orleans, we found that a subset of professionals seeking opportunities to assist in the recovery were drawn to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They subsequently stayed because they valued the pace of their life and the ease at which they could maintain professional and personal networks, more than specific amenities. They stayed even though they found professional opportunities to be limited and considered some amenities and services including parks and transit worse than other cities where they had lived.

Just revitalization in shrinking and shrunken cities? Observations on gentrification from New Orleans and Cincinnati

ABSTRACT In the last decade, shrinking cities have begun to gentrify, leading to optimistic narratives about their recovery. Redevelopment policies, however, can exacerbate social and spatial inequities if explicit efforts do not promote social justice. Drawing on evidence from Cincinnati and New Orleans, we explore 3 components of just revitalization: avoiding displacement, connecting longtime residents to new opportunities, and reducing decline in neighborhoods that are not revitalizing. The article then examines 3 reasons these objectives have been difficult to achieve: the timing of anti-displacement policies, the mechanisms used to connect long-term residents to economic opportunities, and how cities address conditions in neighborhoods that are not growing. The analysis shows that the cities are adopting mechanisms to spread the benefits of revitalization, but without explicit policies targeting low- and moderate-income residents, neighborhoods in shrinking cities can become unaffordable and gentrification will increase inequity.

Beyond the Jobs versus Amenities Debate: Understanding the Migration of Educated Workers and Implications for Planning:

A skilled workforce is essential to regional growth and competitiveness, yet what is needed to attract and retain a talent base is a matter of long-standing debate. Through a qualitative longitudinal study of educated professionals who moved or returned to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, we identify the particular aspects of “jobs” and “amenities” respondents valued, highlight the complex and relational nature of the migration process, and examine how locational priorities shift as life circumstances change. Understanding the place-specific and institutional qualities that affect mobility and how individuals negotiate the migration process are essential to attract and retain skilled workers.