Because the old New Orleans is no more, it could resurrect itself as the great new American city of the 21st century. Or as an impoverished tourist trap. Founded by the French in 1718, site of the first U.S. mint in the Western United States, this one-time pride of the South, this one-time queen of the Gulf Coast, had been declining for decades, slowly becoming an antiquated museum. Now New Orleans must decide how to be reborn. Its choices could foretell the future of urbanism. The sheer human tragedy - and the fact that the Gulf Coast is critical to...