ABSTRACT
We draw on long-term ethnographic field observations, interview data, government reports and planning documents, and newspaper articles to examine several rebranding campaigns launched during the last decade in New Orleans to counter perceptions of urban disaster and misfortune and propagate images of recovery, rebuilding, and resilience. We identify the key actors and organized interests underlying post-disaster rebranding efforts, describe the major reimaging strategies linked to processes of inclusion and marginalization, and address the challenges of participatory place branding in a post-disaster context. We investigate place branding as a set of conflictual practices that express and display highly contradictory urban representations linked to struggles over resident participation in decision-making. By elucidating the localized dynamics of branding in a context of multiple and intersecting crises, our chapter offers a novel processual account of the drivers and impacts of branding processes in a disaster-impacted city.
