With this plan, you can salvage the French Quarter as a tourist destination - it wouldn't be that hard to keep it leveed off, since it is already near or above sea level. I doubt tourists went far into the areas currently under 20 feet of water anyway.
There is land to the west that is 20 feet ABOVE sea level instead of 20 feet BELOW sea level. And much closer to the future channel of the Mississippi. This shouldn't be a tough decision.
Aren't the many residents of suburban NO already living there??
I have to say that the French Quarter was lamer than I thought it would be.
Certain parts of it were quaint and picturesque, but about two-thirds of it were dedicated to selling low-quality Chinese-made trinkets available in pretty much every other city, or to selling massive amounts of identical-tasting Hurricane cocktails or to homo garbage.
I remember wondering, why are there not twice as many restaurants here? The existing ones are so good and the lines are so long - surely an original new venue would be more lucrative than a t-shirt shop!
I assumed the bribery cost of setting up a real business was prohibitive.