ABSTRACT
In the highly contentious rebuilding debates that emerged in New Orleans after the 2005 hurricanes, neighbourhoods were compelled to use rhetorical methods to solicit funding and municipal support for reconstruction. The stakes were particularly high for the Lower Ninth Ward; a neighbourhood the city was reluctant to rebuild. In New Orleans, notions of ‘justice’ were multiple, variable, and instrumental to the Lower Ninth Ward’s ‘right to remain’ assertions. To discuss the ways in which the ‘just city’ was conceived after the hurricanes, the paper draws from the work of John Rawls, Iris Marion Young and Hannah Arendt. Kevin Lynch’s notion of imageability is employed to discuss the centrality of spatial representations in debates over justice and rebuilding. The paper concludes by illustrating this theoretical framework in Lower Ninth Ward efforts to circumvent the municipality’s exclusionary rebuilding plans.
