URBAN REGENERATION AND PUBLIC-HOUSING IN NEW-ORLEANS

Public housing, if located proximate to the central business district or other valued development sites, is often seen as a threat to urban regeneration activities. Growth coalitions may develop strategies to r emove the threat to increase the value of the land and probability of reinvestment. In cities with an African-American majority electorate, like New Orleans, the electoral coalition of the governing regime is i nherently unstable and has to pursue its development strategies carefu lly. Public housing poses a more intractable political barrier to rege neration strategies than do privately owned slum neighborhoods. In New Orleans, the governing coalition has been forced to retreat to its pr eviously faltering spatial-containment policy.