The subtitle here is a bit of a spoiler. News flash: equitable, sound, socially responsible planning did not happen in post-Katrina New Orleans. This won't shock anyone who watched HBO's Treme on a regular basis. But that's the message conveyed by the book's editors right at the outset, in their lively, polemical introduction. Fortunately, their rueful pessimism tells an incomplete and still-evolving story, as they will be the first to concede. New Orleans, nine years after the flood, remains a work in progress.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, it seemed as if the entire world of architecture and planning had descended on the besieged city. Exactly who and what they would design and plan for was uncertain at that point. There was a feeble, corrupt (as it later turned out) mayor ostensibly in charge, along with an almost tragic lack of government leadership, and no clear lines of author-ity. The design schools arrived soon after, working on a parallel track, armed with foundation grants, good but often misguided intentions, and the willful naivet' typical of architecture and planning students (and their professors).