Abstract New Orleans in 1900 was an endangered city clinging to a narrow strip of relatively high ground along the lower Mississippi river. Frequent flooding occurred from the river in the spring and from the lake in the June to October hurricane season. No reliable source of drinking water and no systems for removal of sewerage and rain water existed. Disease mortality was very high especially from frequent outbreaks of yellow fever. The fortuitous appearance of new alternating current (AC) technologies, emerging engineering specialties, and a more progressive form of governance willing to support and finance large scale engineering projects gave New Orleans world class drainage, sewerage and potable water systems. With electric streetcars providing service to newly drained areas and greatly reduced disease mortality, New Orleans entered the twentieth century transformed into a safe and expanding city. Key Words: Electricity, New Orleans, Infrastructure

archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Jason Straight

The tourism industry (TI) brings substantial resources into New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA); and yet many of its workers continue to experience high levels of poverty and related socio-economic issues. Previous research has adequately addressed how the TI impacts the city on a macroeconomic level, but no studies have yet been conducted on those working within it. This study demonstrates that NOLA TI workers are experiencing multiple dimensions of poverty. For this research the common definition of poverty is expanded beyond income levels and asset holdings to include: quality of life; social and political empowerment; personal and property security; and educational and professional opportunities. This emergent qualitative research study draws upon archival data to garner official and objective descriptive statistics, and in-depth interviews with TI workers. A conceptual framework originally devised by Weibing Zhao and JR Ritchie is augmented using research from the fields of Anti-Poverty Tourism (APT), Satisfaction With Life (SWL) surveys, and Capabilities Approach. This revised framework is then applied to the responses provided by 61 NOLA TI workers that were interviewed. This study finds that levels of income and asset poverty among NOLA TI workers are significantly higher than the rest of the city, state, or country. Additionally, age, race, and gender do not play significant factors in determining levels of poverty among workers, but job category plays a small role. While levels of security, opportunity, empowerment and quality of life (SOEQ) may be demonstrably low among TI workers, they frequently perceive them to be high. The hypothesis of "u201cgeographical capital"u201d is presented which maintains there are non-wage factors keeping workers in their occupations due to their love for the city based on their reasons for moving to it. These factors may enrich workers"' lives in other ways, but they are not correlated to higher levels of SOEQ. This hypothesis is rejected. The hypothesis of "u201crelationships as compensation"u201d is then presented. It suggests there are non-wage factors for which workers are willing to endure higher levels of different kinds of poverty in exchange for developing and maintaining extensive social networks. The evidence supports accepting this hypothesis. International development researchers and policy-makers can design and implement new policies focusing on social networks and personal relationships to decrease nontraditional forms of poverty. In this way the research aims to inform the poverty, labor, and tourism dialogues within the context of international development in New Orleans and elsewhere. / Andrew McLaurin Ward

1 / Kyle Arthur DeCoste

archives@tulane.edu / The “creative city” is a cross-disciplinary concept with competing and contradictory meanings and applications. This dissertation responds to scholarly calls for situated analyses of creative city making and contributes to collective understanding of how multiple conceptualizations of the creative city manifest, collide, and intertwine in practice within a specific place and time: New Orleans in the decade following Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures (2005-2015). In the wake of disaster, every resident was called upon to “be creative” in rebuilding the city, yet stakeholders understood and operationalized creativity in different ways. The primary research question asks: what happens in the transmutation of the creative city as it morphs between theoretical concept, rhetorical ideal, and practical strategy? The study design is a multi-method qualitative analysis using document analysis and interviews. I first describe the role of creativity in rebuilding efforts as understood and expressed by elected officials, artists, cultural producers, activists, and rebuilding professionals. Findings from this part of the analysis demonstrate significant differences between stakeholder groups, but also surprising moments of coalescence. Within this broader inquiry, I then focus on an embedded case study of the 2012-2014 Lots of Progress pitch competitions, a program spearheaded by New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) in partnership with the nonprofit incubator Propeller, in which vacant lots were offered as the prize for the most creative concepts for their reuse. Here, I answer the research question: when the offer to remake the city through creativity is left open to all, what ideas and values are brought forth? The case study is an example of the powerful and contradictory discourse of creativity. Program organizers and participants were generally aligned in their dual understanding of creativity both as resistance to an unsatisfactory status quo, and as the ability to transform social problems into development opportunities to be solved through entrepreneurship. In the concluding chapter, insights take the form of recommendations and some thoughts on future praxis in the field: (1) rethinking the pitch competition format and purpose, (2) planning and policy to support New Orleans’ cultural ecosystem, and (3) implications for the evolving field of creative placemaking. / 1 / Heidi Schmalbach

Navigating an airport would be nearly impossible without proper signage. The number of gates, the different zones of access, the layers of conveyor belts running through the floors all provide a challenge for the architect designing the airport, even before the signs are sketched out. Projects such as airports or sporting arenas provide an extreme challenge in programmatic proximities for any designer working to make a building's circulation flow. Topology is a branch of mathematics focusing on the geometry of position and connection. By using it in architecture, program connections can be simplified and made into diagrams of edges and nodes. By taking out scale and shape, the problem is made only about connection and proximity. Applying this topological method to a professional soccer stadium in New Orleans puts the process to the test. The complexities of the public and service areas and how they interact creates a need for simplification, otherwise the building will exceed any manageable construction scale. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

archives@tulane.edu / This dissertation tells the story of the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) from 1965, when they first launched their collective bargaining campaign, until 2008, three years after the storm. I argue that UTNO was initially successful by drawing on the legacy and tactics of the civil rights movement and explicitly combining struggles for racial and economic justice. Throughout their history, UTNO remained committed to civil rights tactics, such as strong internal democracy, prioritizing disruptive action, developing Black and working class leadership, and aligning themselves with community-driven calls for equity. These were the keys to their success. By the early 1990s, as city demographics shifted, the public schools were serving a majority working class Black population. Though UTNO remained committed to some of their earlier civil rights-era strategies, the union became less radical and more bureaucratic. They also faced external threats from the business community with growing efforts to privatize schools, implement standardized testing regimes, and loosen union regulations. I argue that despite the real challenges UTNO faced, they continued to anchor a Black middle class political agenda, demand more for the public schools, and push the statewide labor movement to the left. Finally, the post-Katrina destruction of UTNO demonstrates the limits of union power and the real, human costs of school privatizations. In the wake of the storm, the district fired over 7,500 educators, the largest dismissal of Black educators since Brown v. Board. I argue that these dismissals were intended not only to set the stage for the remaking of the New Orleans school district but also to discipline organized labor in the city and the state. With their members dispersed throughout the country and their homes destroyed, it was impossible for UTNO to mobilize any significant resistance. Though the vacuum created by Katrina helped speed up reforms, the same processes of school closures and privatizations are occurring in urban areas throughout the country. Examining the results of UTNO’s destruction on educators, unions, and city politics helps elucidate the cost of neoliberal reforms and specifically their devastating impact on communities of color. / 1 / Jesse Chanin

archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Alexis Pregeant

Ain't Dere No More is a poem

My internship at the Historic New Orleans Collection was an rewarding learning experience in that I was responsible for writing The Historic New Orleans Collection, Disaster Preparedness Plan, 1997. I worked under the supervision of the Collections Manager, Priscilla Lawrence, and was given a desk in her office. My responsibilities focused on every aspect of developing and writing the plan.