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It's a crappy place to put a city. A lot of local industry is already signing leases in Baton Rouge, and it won't all come back. What it's got going for it is its culture, and that is the most fragile possession a city has; unless you replace all the people, you can't replace the culture.
And Oberon is correct in saying that, in a new and rebuilt New Orleans, there won't be room for so many poor people. Industry won't spend money building for them. But remember that a lot of those poor people you see on TV are working poor, not on relief; they're restaurant workers and hotel workers and entertainers and service workers. They not only carry the culture, but they do a lot of the work. The end product might be a "New Orleans Land," a Disney version of something that was once real, with the employees all bussed in from elsewhere instead of living there.
New Orleans is kind of like Tinkerbelle. The only way it won't die is if people wish really, really hard for it to live; and back it up with money and economic opportunities for all the people who live there now, not just the people who can _afford_ to live there late.
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