Justice and the Geography of Hurricane Katrina

摘要

As I write this, two weeks on from landfall of Hurricane Katrina in Southern USA, the devastating impact of the tremendous winds and flooding is all too apparent. Almost everyone has been evacuated from New Orleans but the city is still under metres of water and the bodies are only just being collected. By the time this piece is published, all the water will probably have been pumped out and reconstruction work started though it seems unlikely that New Orleans will be habitable. In another year's time, the people may have returned and some form of everyday social and economic life restored; there is some talk now of abandoning New Orleans but that seems unlikely to happen. By then Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath may have already made it into geography textbooks and curricula; the 1993 New Orleans floods are a case study in my son's revision guide for his geography school exams and this event invites an updated version. There is clearly a range of ways that geographical study of this disaster can yield insights. It is too early to come to any conclusions, of course, but some of the possible questions can be posed.