Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
levee system, the design of a vast City Park, and urbanization of the entire Orleans
Parish area bounded to the south by the Mississippi River, the east by the Inner
Harbor Navigation Canal (known as the Industrial Canal, it was was completed in
1923) and to the north by Lake Pontchartrain, and the Lakeview and Gentilly
neighborhoods.
Throughout this period, subdivisions were annexed to the City of New Orleans
as they were built, while remaining a part of the separate parish jurisdictions in
terms of flood protection provided by the Orleans Levee Board. City sprawl up until
1945 was essentially horizontal sprawl consisting of one-floor, single-family units.
Even so, New Orleans continued to form a relatively compact city, politically
unified under a single authority whose jurisdiction was contiguous with the parish
limits and characterized by relatively little spatial segregation [LEW 03].
Thus, the urban growth of New Orleans was different from other US cities prior
to the Second World War. Outside the Orleans Parish levee perimeter, road
construction through the marshes was difficult and expensive so that by 1950
horizontal expansion and infilling activities had run their course. In 1950, New
Orleans was ranked 17th among metropolitan areas by population (570,000
inhabitants), approximately one-third of whom (31%) were black.
In the immediate postwar period there was a distinct acceleration in urban
sprawl. New Orleans did not escape this trend which led to demand for additional
wetlands recovery, including the draining of marshland and the installation of public
service infrastructure. Following the hurricane in 1947, Congress voted to fund the
subdivision of a part of Jefferson Parish bordering the city to the west (East Bank
Jefferson). At the time, public opinion favored enclosing and draining the marshes,
and offering the land for urban development. Wetlands were simply wasted lands. It
was therefore thought suitable to remove these lands from the tyranny of nature
[COL 05]. This decision led to a veritable explosion of suburbanization [LEW 03] in
metropolitan New Orleans.
While the New Orleans' incorporated area and the metropolitan area were one
and the same, and Jefferson and St Bernard Parishes together totaled no more than
60,000 inhabitants against New Orleans' 500,000 inhabitants in 1940; by 1970 they
totaled nearly 400,000 inhabitants for New Orleans' 600,000 inhabitants. In 1970
the city center only represented 60% of the metropolitan population. After peaking
at 627,500 inhabitants in the 1960 census, its population began to decline.
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