Nawlins, just - FILL IT IN.
N.O. is a bowl below sea level that billions are being spent upon wastefully in futile attempt to preserve what is, in effect, a massive cofferdam next to the Mississippi river holding thousands of perverts, felons, and deviants, all crawling around looking for fun-seeking victims to exploit.
Since the place is SINKING several inches each year, even filling in the 'bowl' with, say, blocks of recycled trash mixed in cement IS FUTILE!
Except for the port, ditch N.O. Abandon it. Let the delta flood to preserve the river delta WETLANDS. Save America BIG BUCKS.
In April I spent two weeks with my nephew working on a house he bought in the Bywater area about a year before Katrina. The amazing thing about NOLA even as recently as 6 months ago is that NOWHERE IN THE CITY do you have ANY sense of police presence. We spent 2 or 3 hours a day "sightseeing" the worst of the wreckage, and in nearly two weeks I saw FOUR police cars, ONE of them writing a ticket to a driver of a Military Jeep, and three of them pulled over in the empty parking lots of boarded-up stores, with the cop inside looking to be apparently reading a magazine. Crime has been slowly returning to the city, and people are really pissed to see no one willing or able to keep that from happening. Soon, BIG money will be circulating in the city, and I fully expect the criminal class will find a way to migrate back, figuring there is now a new client-base for drugs, with oodles of disposable cash. No matter who GETS the money, it can be stolen from them, so strong-arm robbery will probably go up.