The city had about 455K population before Katrina. It's at about 200K now. How long do you think it will before it has 455k again? I'd bet it will be when I am in my 70's. I'm 42 now. The city held many people who cannot afford to move back and for whom there was no work in N.O. anyway. Therefore, Houston, you have a problem. The former NO'ers aren't leaving. They didn't exactly bring in an positive economic tide, eh?

And the economic effects of hurricanes and the geography of Louisiana are not confined to the SouthEast US.

• Some 25 square miles of Louisiana have been collapsing into the gulf each year for three-quarters of a century. A total of 1,900 square miles, roughly the area of Delaware, disappeared between the 1930s and 2005, and another 217 square miles were pulverized into liquid by Katrina and Rita. And that land loss, says Ted Falgout, who has run Port Fourchon for 28 years, poses a growing threat not only to the people who live here but also to the U.S. energy supply.
  
  "We're on a train wreck here," says Falgout. "We have not designed the energy infrastructure - or any infrastructure - [to handle land loss]."