The big easy

...and bigger difficulties

In today's NYTimes, Amy Liu and Nigel Holmes write:

Two years after Hurricane Katrina toppled New Orleans’s levee system, leaving more than half the city under water, there are signs of revival. The city’s population has climbed to 68 percent of its pre-hurricane level, the work force is 78 percent of what it was before the flood, and sales tax revenues have rebounded to 84 percent.

But some troubling trends persist. The city’s share of the region’s population has dropped to 30 percent, an indication that economic activity is shifting to the suburbs.