ABSTRACT
Like city dwellers anywhere, New Orleanians perceive, delineate, and label their urban spaces in myriad ways and argue about it endlessly. The spatial perceptions vary complexly over time and within subsegments of the population. While some pedantic souls insist that neighborhoods are named absolutely and delineated officially, as if it is a matter of law or physics, such perceptions of place are more appropriately viewed as the human constructs they are, wonderfully individualized and wholly subject to interpretation. Wards as political-geographical units were introduced with the 1805 chartering of the city, replacing a Spanish equivalent from colonial times. Place perceptions and labels inform on nativity, race, and other social dimensions. New Orleans natives with deep local roots often use the ward system in perceiving and naming urban space, probably because it formed the premier space-delineation option prior to the era of urban planning and historic districting that began in the 1970s.
