Project Katrina

Often it is hard to notice nothing but the bad news coming out of New Orleans. But in fact there are some positive things happening on a pretty grand level as well.

As Katrina approaches its five-year anniversary, New Orleans has made enormous strides toward recovery. The city’s GDP is almost $9 billion higher today than it was in 2005, its population is about 80 percent of what it was before the storm, and city officials say the quality of public education has gone up significantly. But only one in three New Orleans residents polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation this year said their lives have returned to normal since Katrina, and 70 percent of them said they feel that the nation has forgotten the challenges they still face.

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New Orleans’ already struggling economy was dealt a second and third blow by the recession and Gulf oil spill, but jobs in the city should be increasingly plentiful now that the city’s main industry—tourism—seems to be making a comeback. ABC News reports that visits to New Orleans jumped to 7.5 million in 2009–up from 3.7 million visitors in 2006– and raked in $4.2 billion dollars for the city. While the 70,000 tourism jobs in New Orleans is still well below the 85,000 jobs that existed before Katrina, this year the city reported its largest Mardi Gras celebration in 25 years.

Of course there are still problems, like 50,000 homes still in ruins, but we shouldn’t forget the strides that have been made in the past five years, awkward as they might have been.