Rebuilding After Katrina: Forming the Federal-State-Local Partnership for Southern Louisiana

As we approached the six-month mark of the post-Katrina recovery effort, the Brookings Institution hosted leaders from the New Orleans area along with federal policymakers for a public dialogue on how best to rebuild the city of New Orleans and southern Louisiana. The program assessed the state and local progress on the ground, and focused on the role the federal government needed to play in order to facilitate the re-building of communities and residents’ lives. Participants included the co-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority and the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding.

The forum was designed to be highly interactive. It was comprised of two panels. The first will focused on the status of state and local plans for rebuilding southern Louisiana and New Orleans–honing in on details of the local and state visions for long-term rebuilding, whether these plans are complementary, and the extent of the challenges that remain. The second panel will consisted of federal leaders who discussed what the federal response ought to have been, given what the people of Louisiana and New Orleans envisioned and needed.