"A superb contribution to the physical and cultural geography of New Orleans. It surpasses in scope and depth the previous geographies...and will probably stand out in future years as a minor classic."


Timothy Reilly, Ph.D.
Department of History and Geography
University of Louisiana at Lafayette

What is the shape and origin of the physical landscape, and how have humans transformed it?

How are phenomena distributed spatially, why, and how have the patterns changed through time?

How do people perceive place within New Orleans, and what distinguishes New Orleans from other places?

What clues to the above questions do we see hidden in the modern-day cityscape?

Five years in the making, Geographies of New Orleans unveils fresh new perspectives on a famous old city, from its fragile deltaic terrain, to its striking built environment, to its diverse ethnic makeup, to its devastation by Hurricane Katrina. Geographer Richard Campanella brings computer cartography, aerial imagery, spatial analysis, and fieldwork to the study of urban and regional history. In chapters with intriguing titles such as “America’s Oldest Multicultural Society?,” “What the Yellow Pages Reveals About New Orleans,” “Creole New Orleans: The Geography of a Controversial Ethnicity,” “Paradoxical Yet Typical: The Geography of the African-American Community,” and “Hurricane Katrina and the Geographies of Catastrophe,” Campanella integrates hundreds of historical sources with custom-made maps, graphs, photos, and satellite images to explore the intricate urban fabrics of this fascinating city, up to the moment of their terrible shredding.

By day, Richard Campanella is Assistant Director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities, and Research Professor with Tulane’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. By night, he researches, maps, and writes about the historical geography of the New Orleans region, an interest that has produced two critically acclaimed books, New Orleans Then and Now (1999, co-authored with his wife Marina) and the award-winning Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (2002), both published by Pelican Publishing Company. An LSU-trained geographer, Campanella originally hails from Brooklyn, New York and has worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, a wilderness ranger in the Rocky Mountains of Utah and Montana, and as a senior scientist at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. His work at Tulane entails the application of mapping sciences and geographical analysis to a wide range of disciplines. He and Marina live in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.