Can pro-equity hybrid governance shape an egalitarian city? Lessons from post-Katrina New Orleans

Abstract

This paper examines how different housing actors (social resilience cells and their partners, institutional structures, neighbourhood communities) in post-Katrina New Orleans have activated their social capital into institutional capital. It uses a critical up-to-date synthesis of social capital enriched by governance theories to investigate how new governance hybridities can be shaped in order to guide the city’s housing redevelopment. Furthermore, the paper seeks to evaluate the potential these governance hybridities have in redeveloping the city toward an egalitarian post-disaster city. By this is meant a city in which all affected neighbourhoods are recognized for their unique housing and social needs as well as for their distinct sociodemographic and physical characteristics, and where different social resilience cells are responsive to the needs of specific communities. The paper examines the unique rebuilding footprint and governance formation potential of eight social resilience cells in New Orleans. The results show that governance-improving fermentations were mostly brought to life by pro-equity and pro-comaterializing social resilience cells and their alliances at the local level during the late recovery years. Nonetheless, the new forms of governance are dominated by the pro-profit political economy paradigm. As such, the potential of the improved governance hybridities in facilitating egalitarian socio-spatial effects has remained moderate.

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