The Long Road Back: Signal Noise in the Post-Katrina Context

On Aug 29, 2005, the US watched as Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, inflicting more than $100 billion of property damage across broad swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama and ultimately claiming more than 1,600 lives. At the present writing -- eighteen months after the stor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The independent review (Oakland, Calif.) Calif.), 2007-10, Vol.12 (2), p.235-259
Main Author: Chamlee-Wright, Emily
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
City planning
Civil Society
Collective action
Communities
Disaster recovery
Disasters
Economic aspects
Flood insurance
Government finance
Gulfs
Hurricanes
Levees
Natural Disasters
Neighborhoods
New Orleans, Louisiana
Noise
Nonprofit organizations
Post-disaster reconstruction
Public policy
Reconstruction
Redevelopment
Retirement communities
Signal noise
Social aspects
Social capital
Social services
Society
State Intervention
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Summary:On Aug 29, 2005, the US watched as Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, inflicting more than $100 billion of property damage across broad swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama and ultimately claiming more than 1,600 lives. At the present writing -- eighteen months after the storm -- entire communities and neighborhoods still feel like ghost towns. To many observers, the slow pace of recovery needs no other explanation than common sense, considering that the scale of destruction was so immense. Thomas Schelling has attributed the halting pace of recovery to a massive problem of collective action. Without assurances that others will return, people are reluctant to take on the disproportionate risks of returning. Effective recovery, even in the wake of catastrophic disaster, depends primarily on the social and economic systems that coordinate people's daily life. It is imperative that public policy play only a supporting role to these systems rather than create signal noise that inhibits their successful reestablishment.
ISSN:1086-1653
2169-3420