This book blends critical theoretical insight with a historically grounded comparative study to examine the form, trajectory, and contradictions of redevelopment efforts following the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters. Based on years of research in the two cities, the book contends that New York and New Orleans have emerged as paradigmatic “crisis cities,” representing a free-market approach to post-disaster redevelopment that is increasingly influential in our current, crisis-prone urban age. This approach, the book terms “crisis-driven urbanization,” emphasizes the privatization of disaster aid, devolution of recovery responsibility to the local state, and use of corporate tax incentives and grants to spur revitalization. Rather than target the populations and ecosystems most heavily impacted by the disasters, deregulated aid dollars subsidize luxury development and urban rebranding campaigns that accelerate gentrification and displacement and advance urban agendas long sought by growth coalitions, By exposing both the pre- and post-history of the two disasters, the book shows how long-neglected landscapes of risk and vulnerability combine with starkly inequitable redevelopment to turned sudden disaster into long-term crises. Such uneven and contradictory redevelopment only exacerbates risk of future crisis—and is not inevitable.
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