Nicole Gelinas, a native New Orleanian, writes in City Journal that before Katrina, New Orleans had plenty of problems and this disaster has only exacerbated or highlighted them.
No American city has ever gone through what New Orleans must go through: the complete (if temporary) flight of its most affluent and capable citizens, followed by social breakdown among those left behind, after which must come the total reconstruction of economic and physical infrastructure by a devastated populace.
And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructureincompetent.
Of course, there are a half-dozen other American cities that could also fit the bill, that would also see the same problems where a similar disaster to occur there.
