Abstract

Catastrophic failures such as Hurricane Katrina and the levee collapse in New Orleans events serve as a potent symbol of the havoc caused by longstanding neglect of the public realm in our American cities. It vividly illustrates the risks and complexity we face to rebuild infrastructure systems in ways that will address past shortcomings but also meet new challenges posed by the disruptive shifts in economic, demographic, and environmental conditions underway across the nation. This paper argues that we must study the insights revealed by Katrina and fundamentally rethink the role of infrastructure as a cultural ecology where our private and collective lives add up to systems that supportequitable, robust, resilient and sustainable cities.