NOLA Pioneers

New Orleans is slowly rebounding. Much of the work is being undertaken by people that the NYTimes describes as "pioneers". In this article, which is the first in a series on the patchwork recovery of NOLA, it becomes clear that the improvements are happening in one house here and one house there without any sense of a rapid improvement.

Statistics — fragmentary and loosely bandied about by civic boosters here — nonetheless support the idea of tentative rebirth. In Gentilly, a door-to-door survey by a Dartmouth College professor this spring found 31 percent of homes either renovated or occupied, and an additional 57 percent gutted or under construction. That meant that only 12 percent of the houses in the neighborhood had been abandoned; a year ago, block after block appeared forsaken and silent.

You really get the sense that the reporters weren't so sure New Orleans would ever bounce back. They seem to see this small, piecemeal improvements as an important step, but not enough by itself.