“New Orleans is still in the middle of a major urban experiment,” says Senior Fellow Amy Liu in this podcast, the 50th episode of the Brookings Cafeteria. “It’s an urban experiment that is not so much just about responding to Katrina and the oil spill, but really is the great experiment of our time.” The central question within that experiment is, “regardless of any environmental or economic disaster—like the Great Recession, the loss of a manufacturing sector—how does an economic center, a population center, really continue to grow and adapt?”
Liu is co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and has been an expert on the rebuilding efforts in greater New Orleans and southern Louisiana post Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, and the recession. 
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Also in this episode, Senior Fellow David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, offers his regular "Wessel's Economic Update."
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Show Notes:

The Data Center
The New Orleans Index (2011)
"New Orleans Five Years After: A Transformation Unfolding"
"Resilience and Opportunity: Lessons from the U.S. Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita" (book, 2011)

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