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Suburban Swamp: The Rise And Fall Of Planned New-Town Communities In New Orleans East, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

This paper examines the emergence, development and abandonment of ‘new town’ communities in eastern New Orleans in the half century after 1957. Containing about two-thirds of the land area in the New Orleans city limits, much of it wrested from swamps using emerging drainage technologies, eastern New Orleans promised municipal leaders, planners and citizens an alternative to crowded city and sprawling suburb. This paper also considers how planners and many local citizens viewed planned communities in the eastern stretches of the city as an antidote to population exodus from New Orleans. It explores the influences, design characteristics, social planning aspirations …