Worldchanging.com has creative and inspirational ideas about how to rebuild New Orleans to make it less vulnerable. Also some good ideas from Ergosphere. Both articles suggest razing neighborhoods that are destroyed and filling in to a much higher level. Ergosphere suggests building with stilts and jackable frames, so houses can be raised as the ground sinks. The WorldChanging article suggests using fitting new buildings with solar panels, which would be too expensive to retrofit but would be reasonable and financeable in new construction.
Dennis Hastert has backed away from his suggestion not to rebuild New Orleans. A strategy to continously rebuild coastal property in Florida and abandon New Orleans seems suspiciously like natural-disaster-enabled redistricting.
How about this? Anyone and everyone living/working in the areas hit by Katrina/Rita – NO FEDERAL INCOME tax owed until the entire region is rebuilt with state of the art flood protection (like the Dutch have), rebuilt homes above flood plain (raised), green spaces and wetlands completely restored. If your business moves into this area, and you employee at least 75% local residents, you get the release from Fed. Income Tax as well. How long? Until the city receives just as much in Fed. Tax releif as the US government has given away to foreign governments since WWII. What if the Fed government says no? Would they put an entire region in jail for tax evasion? Would they have the room? Would it be an improvement in living conditions compared to homelessness?