Is New Orleans becoming a frontier?
Reuters has a story today 
about regular folks moving to New Orleans to help the city rebuild. But it's not just Good Samaritans. They are entrepreneurs, people with a sense of adventure, and value hunters. These people are moving there to carve out a little piece of the future for themselves.
"The largest contingent of new Reuters piece continues, "are Latino workers who are ... doing much of the city's renovation work." And if these new residents generally conform to statistics , they are young men with families, ready to work hard and get a piece of the "American Dream."
Ernie the Attorney writes about this also—bloggers (and other important New Orleanians) are gathering this week for the Rising Tide Conference . The conference is an event for organizing people, to help them connect via the blogosphere and within neighborhoods. The people of New Orleans—native AND new—are putting the city back together in two important ways: structurally (natch) and through the creation of an organic, self-generated voice. The voice will try to take back the story of New Orleans' tragedy and heroism, and have it be the first resource.
It will be interesting to see the cultural effect on New Orleans caused by Katrina. Not only are new people moving into the city, but the thousands of people who were displaced have moved into surrounding large cities. These people are bringing their culture with them, and after a while there will be some big changes as a result.
I moved from New Orleans to Minneapolis just 5 months before Katrina. I've only been back home once since then, and there's still a lot of work to be done. It will be years before the city heals, but the city will never be the same again.
can this happen in califas