New Orleans - "Inevitable City"

Ernest Partridge has a well reasoned piece at Democratic Underground on the placement of New Orleans - below sea level and all:

For the fact of the matter is that New Orleans is an "inevitable city" – a geographic/economic necessity. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds of the 48 contiguous states, and within its watershed most of the nation's agricultural products are produced. And, now that we have outsourced most of our manufacturing base, agricultural products are our primary export, offsetting the United States' huge (and unsustainable) trade deficit. Down the Mississippi and its tributaries, barges full of the bounty of American farms are towed toward the Gulf of Mexico, and to the necessary gulf port at the Mississippi delta.

At the same time, essential imports arrive at this port – by tonnage, the largest port in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world. In addition, from the state of Louisiana, the United States gets 15% of its domestic petroleum and 27% of its natural gas.

So all of the gasbags questioning why it is there, why anyone would want to live there, or why it should be rebuilt should just go and ... read some history. New Orleans is not just a city full of black jazz-playing bead throwers. It is a city essential to our economy.