Resilience and the cultural landscape : the case of the Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina
The purpose of this research is to determine the importance of using the cultural landscape in evaluating the resilience of an urban community after the occurrence of a natural disaster. The focus is on the neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in the city of New Orleans. Natural disasters are gaining significance and magnitude when they hit cities, which are becoming more and more populated over the years.  The damage these disasters cause is colossal. It is very costly for cities to undergo major disasters and sometimes, large sections of cities need to be entirely rebuilt. The costliest price is the human life, and as history marks it, too many lives have perished due to disasters. While rebuilding is a challenging task, yet feasible, rebuilding a community is not as tangible as rebuilding the infrastructure. This research focuses on the many intangible aspects, like place attachment and social networks, a community needs to rebuild itself in a sound and resilient way.  The concept of resilience is very contested in the literature and many have attempted to measure it. This research takes a step back and scrutinizes the concept of resilience from a holistic perspective, which highlights its complexity. This leads to questioning the importance of measuring the concept, especially that it changes with time and with the different scales of geography. In addition, a relationship between the cultural landscape and resilience is established, which allows for a better understanding of this complexity.  Taking a little from multiple disciplines (Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning, and Sociology), this research resorts to a methodology that reflects its multidisciplinary aspect. The methodology is the mixed methods research design, which allows the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. The focus is to gather census data, newspaper articles, and observations to give a general perspective on the post-Katrina situation. Interviews are collected from residents and from professionals so as to tackle the research from different angles. This allows reaching results at the case study level as well as the theoretical level.  This research validates the importance of using the cultural landscape in post-disaster situations as planners and government officials overlook it. Some of the elements that constitute it like place attachment and social networks motivate people to return to their original neighbourhoods and rebuild their homes and community. These elements, however, cannot by themselves give people back what they lost in the disaster. By relating the cultural landscape to the concept of resilience, it implies that resilience is a social construction.
'Home' Lower Ninth Cultural landscape 'Home' Social construction Natural disasters Urban communities Mixed-methods research design Lower Ninth Ward New Orleans