Urban Power and Community Development in the 'World Risk Society': Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans (USA)

This article examines urban power and community movements when a city is consumed by a major disaster. Using New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina as its case study, this investigation will identify discriminatory police practices, public-private development policies, and ethnopolitical leadership that reproduced historic racial and class inequality in post-Katrina New Orleans. This study will argue that it was not so-called disaster capitalism, but automatic or "reflexive" re-development (Ulrich Beck' s concept) that revived the city' s traditional racial caste and structural class stratification. Finally, this policy mix in disaster response initiatives overshadowed specific strategies and goals for rebuilding advocated by community-based movements.