The Great Footprint Debate, Updated
In the tumultuous aftermath of the 2005 Katrina deluge, New Orleanians debated passionately a fundamental geographical question: should the city close down flood-damaged neighborhoods and shrink its urban “footprint” in the interest of environmental sustainability, or does every citizen have a right to return to their home? Tulane geographer Richard Campanella revisits “the Great Footprint…
A Glorious Mess: Perceptual History of New Orleans Neighborhoods
Be skeptical of “official” city neighborhoods, writes Tulane geographer Richard Campanella. Neighborhoods are best delineated, named, and understood by the people who inhabit them, he argues, and in New Orleans, that makes for a glorious mess. Courtesy New Orleans Magazine. New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and…
Essential Geographies of New Orleans Music
Part 2: Rhythms, Blues, and the Infinite Potential of Congo Square What comes after jazz? How does a city reprise its collective creation of the Americas’ most original and distinctive art form? Part 2 of this essay surveys happenings in New Orleans music since the emergence of jazz around the turn of the twentieth century.…
Nora Newcombe and David Lambert to Keynote Geography Education Research Track at 2018 AAG Annual Meeting
The National Center for Research in Geography Education (NCRGE) is pleased to announce keynotes by Nora Newcombe and David Lambert for a special track of geography education sessions during the 2018 AAG Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The keynotes by Professors Newcombe and Lambert are respectively scheduled for 1:20 – 3:00 PM and 3:20 –…
Louisiana’s Turn to Mass Incarceration: The Building of a Carceral State
Louisiana's prison and jail incarceration rates from 1978 to 2015 showing the number of people incarcerated in state prisons and local jails per 100,000 people; #methodology The history of the Louisiana penal system is marked through crisis. For the majority of the 20th century such crises revolved around the state’s singular prison, the Louisiana State…
Disaster and Response in an Experiment Called New Orleans, 1700s-2000s
Courtesy Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Tulane geographer Richard Campanella analyzes three centuries of disasters in New Orleans—storm, flood, fire, plague, war, among others—and how the city has responded, recovered, and transformed. New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,” will feature a series of articles on…
How ‘Forward Thrust’ Reshaped Southern Geography
Take a look at where the capitals of Southern states and colonies were located originally, and where state capitals are today. Most have been moved inland, including Louisiana’s; New Orleans once had capital-city status until it transferred to Baton Rouge in the 1840s. Tulane geographer explains the pattern, courtesy Louisiana Cultural Vistas (PDF). New Orleans:…
The History—and Geography—of Public Drinking in New Orleans
Drinking has a geography, and New Orleans has a geography of drinking. Where did this come from, and how does it work? Tulane geographer examines a key moment on Bourbon Street in the 1960s when potations took to the public space. Courtesy The Times-Picayune (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s…
Élisée Reclus in Louisiana (1853-1855): Encounters with Racism and Slavery
In January 1853, the future anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) arrived in Louisiana, where he spent almost three years. Reclus was in self-exile, having left France in the wake of Louis-Napoléon’s 1851 coup d’état. Élisée and his older brother Élie, future anarchist anthropologist, had organized local opposition to the coup, but left ahead of the…
The Ozone Belt: How St. Tammany Parish Turned Ecological Services into Good Business—but for the Wrong Reasons
For nearly a century, the piney woods across Lake Pontchartrain came to be known as the Ozone Belt—a ‘brand’ that touted the region’s salubrious environs as a summertime alternative to pestilential New Orleans. And it seemed to work, writes Tulane geographer Richard Campanella—but not for the touted reasons. Courtesy The Times-Picayune (PDF). New Orleans: Place…
Lugger Culture: Vernacular Oyster Vessels of Coastal Louisiana
A century ago, distinctive vernacular boats traversed the waterways in and around New Orleans, even sailing up to the rear of the French Quarter. Known as luggers, their crews brought oysters and other wild foods to public markets—and coastal culture to the metropolis. Tulane geographer Richard Campanella investigates “lugger culture” in this article from Louisiana…
Pleasure Atlas: New Orleans
Making space for—and money from—pleasure in New Orleans is as old as the city itself. By Tulane geographer Richard Campanella, courtesy LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture a Pleasure Atlas of New Orleans (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,” will feature a series of…