From 9/11 to 8/29: Post-disaster recovery and rebuilding in New York and New Orleans

TitleFrom 9/11 to 8/29: Post-disaster recovery and rebuilding in New York and New Orleans
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2008
AuthorsGotham, Kevin Fox
JournalSocial Forces
Volume87
Issue2
Pagination1039–1062
Abstractis article examines the process of post-disaster recovery and rebuilding in New York City since 9/11 and in New Orleans since the Hurricane Katrina disaster (8/29). As destabilizing events, 9/11 and 8/29 forced a rethinking of the major categories, concepts and theories that long dominated disaster research. We analyze the form, trajectory and problems of reconstruction in the two cities with special emphasis on the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant program, the Liberty Zone and the Gulf Opportunity Zone, and tax-exempt private activity bonds to nance and promote reinvestment. Drawing on a variety of data sources, we show that New York and New Orleans have become important laboratories for entrepreneurial city and state governments seeking to use post-disaster rebuilding as an opportunity to push through far-reaching neoliberal policy reforms. e emphasis on using market-centered approaches for urban recovery and rebuilding in New York and New Orleans should be seen not as coherent or sustainable responses to urban disaster but rather as deeply contradictory restructuring strategies that are intensifying the problems they seek to remedy.
URLhttps://www2.tulane.edu/liberal-arts/upload/Gotham-GreenbergSocialForces2008.pdf
DOI10.1353/sof.0.0131
Short TitleFrom 9/11 to 8/29
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