New Orleans East Revitalization
Winner of the C40 Reinventing Cities Award from the Mayor of New Orleans. A comprehensive urban revitalization plan integrating disaster resilience, renewable energy, transit, and equitable community development.
Rebuilding a community that was left behind.
New Orleans East is one of the largest geographic areas within the city, home to a diverse population that includes one of the largest Vietnamese-American communities in the South. It was also one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — and, nearly two decades later, large portions of the district remain underdeveloped with vacant lots, limited transit, and aging infrastructure.
The C40 Reinventing Cities competition challenged teams to propose transformative, carbon-neutral development for underutilized urban sites. The New Orleans East proposal took a holistic approach: rather than treating sustainability as a single-issue problem, it integrated eight interconnected layers — from disaster planning and solar energy to green jobs and community development — into a unified vision.
The proposal won the C40 Reinventing Cities Award from the Mayor of New Orleans, recognizing its ambition, feasibility, and commitment to equitable development. The plan was designed not just to build new infrastructure, but to create lasting economic opportunity for residents who have waited too long for reinvestment in their community.
Eight layers, one vision.
Toggle layers on and off to explore how each element of the revitalization plan integrates into the overall vision for New Orleans East.
Every layer, connected.
New Orleans East deserves more than recovery. It deserves transformation. This plan was designed to prove that sustainability, equity, and economic development are not competing priorities — they are the same priority, expressed through different layers of the same vision. The C40 Award recognized that ambition. The work continues.