Moving to a shrinking city? Some suggestive observations on why college-educated professionals came to New Orleans and why they stayed

Abstract

Chinese

The 2010 Census showed population increases in urban core neighbourhoods in US shrinking or legacy cities. Influenced by Florida’s creative class theory, municipal leaders in shrinking cities have sought to attract and retain creative and college-educated residents as a revitalisation strategy and implemented amenity-based policy initiatives. Nevertheless, when compared with strong market cities, weak market cities have fewer amenities and less robust job markets. Why college-educated professionals would choose to live in cities with weak job markets and declining services is not well explained. Based on findings from two sets of interviews conducted five years apart with college-educated professionals living and working in New Orleans, we found that a subset of professionals seeking opportunities to assist in the recovery were drawn to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They subsequently stayed because they valued the pace of their life and the ease at which they could maintain professional and personal networks, more than specific amenities. They stayed even though they found professional opportunities to be limited and considered some amenities and services including parks and transit worse than other cities where they had lived.

Keywords

gentrification migration New Orleans shrinking cities social networks

Introduction

By the 2000s, middle income residents had moved back to central cities throughout the USA, increasing property values and rents as well as stimulating neighbourhood change. Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class (2002) became an international bestseller and, as Jamie Peck (2005) called it, ‘a public-policy phenomenon’ because it offered local amenity-creation as a path towards attracting and retaining college graduates and professionals. To weak and strong market municipalities alike, a revitalised urban core appeared attainable. Influenced by both observable neighbourhood change and Florida’s argument, public officials sought to attract the creative class because otherwise, they feared, in the words of Salon writer Christopher Deher (2002), ‘they’d go the way of Detroit’.

Deher’s comment failed to anticipate that the iconic shrinking city also would attract a subpopulation of young, college-educated professionals and that some of its central core neighbourhoods would gentrify (Moskowitz, 2015). Likewise, other shrinking or shrunk cities – those that had lost significant population but are now stable or growing – saw population gains in historic neighbourhoods and accompanying indicators of gentrification such as new restaurants and cafes (Swanstrom, 2014). Public officials began to see the creative class as the saviour of post-industrial ‘loser’ cities (Ponzini and Rossi, 2010; Rousseau, 2009).

Even though public, private and philanthropic entities have started initiatives to attract college graduates to declining cities, little research has investigated why college-educated residents move to or stay in shrinking cities. This article examines three interrelated questions. Why did college-educated professionals move to a city that had lost population for decades? Five years later, why did they stay? And how did they perceive their prospects for living in the region?

Using New Orleans as a case, this paper draws on interviews conducted five years apart with college-educated professionals who were working in New Orleans in 2009. Few of our participants considered living in New Orleans before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In 2005, the disaster drew attention to New Orleans and created both job opportunities and the chance to participate in a significant urban rebuilding and social change project. While our research participants moved to New Orleans for job opportunities, they stayed because they valued their way of life in New Orleans, including patterns of daily life and public culture that reinforced social connections and the ease with which these could be maintained. Nevertheless, the participants were also highly aware of the trade-offs given the challenges that plague US shrinking cities, including declining urban services and a blighted built environment along with fewer career opportunities. Most research examining gentrification has focused on strong market metropolitan areas, and the distinct phenomenon of college-educated professionals moving to shrinking or legacy cities needs further attention.

Why do college-educated professionals move to and stay in shrinking cities?

In the second half of the 20th century, when industry moved from US central cities to the suburbs and from the Northeast to the Sunbelt, people followed (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982; Sugrue, 1996). Retail businesses closed or moved, property became vacant, and cities faced multiple challenges including worsening urban services and fewer resources to provide amenities. In the words of one Detroit resident: ‘We used to have everything: department stores, grocery stores, all of it … Now the sewage backs up, the park is locked, the school is closed’ (quoted in Moskowitz, 2015). In the 1980s or earlier in a few places, formally deindustrialising cities became global and regional economic hubs (Sassen, 2012). These cities grew once again, at times surpassing their industrial peaks in both population and employment. In contrast, others – shrinking cities – did not develop new areas of economic strength and their population continues to decrease. They also suffer from an image problem where they are perceived as ‘losers’ in the post-industrial era rather than appealing places to live and work (Rousseau, 2009).

During the same period, middle-income residents returned to urban core neighbourhoods. They increased real estate values, stimulated neighbourhood investment, and attracted services oriented towards their preferences such as restaurants and coffee houses. They also changed social and political neighbourhood dynamics. Commonly called gentrification, the process has also been called the fifth migration (Fishman, 2005), the back-to-the-city-movement (Hyra, 2015; Sturtevant and Jung, 2011), and the new urban renewal (Hyra, 2012). In 2010–2011, the primary city’s growth rate exceeded that of the suburbs in 27 of 51 of the largest US metropolitan areas for the first time in nine decades (Frey, 2012, 2015). Because gentrification became visible first in global cities or regional economic hubs such as New York and London, much gentrification research investigates the trend in strong market cities (Brash, 2011; Freeman, 2006; Glass, 1964; Zukin, 1982). By the 2000s, depopulated cities including St Louis and Detroit in the USA, Sheffield in the UK, Roubaix in France, among others, also experienced repopulation in some neighbourhoods (Moskowitz, 2015; Rousseau, 2009; Swanstrom, 2014). The economic circumstances in these cities differ from global and regional centres, and the cities’ overall populations did not increase.

Early gentrification scholars argued about whether economic restructuring or social and cultural shifts led to gentrification, but as the scholarship developed, it became clear that both contributed to gentrification, and like most urban processes, there are complex contingencies that differ from place to place. Because cities that had experienced disinvestment were now seeing growth in wealthier residents with higher levels of educational attainment, public officials wanted to stimulate further reinvestment. Richard Florida’s (2002) creative class theory had a strong influence on urban policy because he provided a pathway when he argued that a new highly mobile creative class can choose where to live, and they base their decisions primarily on quality of life factors including amenities as well as a tolerant or accepting social environment. In this consumption-based framework, restaurants, coffee houses and bike paths become critical drivers that support creative lifestyles and the networking that builds a creative milieu (Banks, 2009; Florida, 2002). These ideas influenced strong and weak cities alike. Weak market cities and states including the city of Baltimore and the state of Michigan turned policy attention to attracting creatives through developing amenities and networking opportunities (Michigan, n.d.; Ponzini and Rossi, 2010).

Florida’s assertion increased attention to the role of amenities in urban growth and influenced urban policy, even though scholars remain sceptical about whether there is a newly mobile class that places higher value on amenities. Scholars have long debated whether people with high levels of human capital simulate urban growth or if jobs attract these desirable residents, and many continue to argue that jobs attract residents and drive urban growth (Storper, 2013) because people with high levels of human capital need high wages to consume and access amenities. Cities with more amenities may be growing faster (Glaeser et al., 2001), but cities also have similar bundles of amenities and therefore people do not choose one city over another for amenities alone (Storper and Manville, 2006). Even Florida (2010) suggested that during economically tumultuous times, highly skilled workers might be more likely to move to mega-regions because they hedge economic risks in thick job markets.

Both the creative class and gentrification debates offer insight into live and work decisions of relatively mobile educated people. These debates have examined in detail how and why middle and upper income residents decide where to live and work. Nevertheless, shrinking cities have fewer job opportunities and relatively worse amenities than stable or growing cities, and therefore neither jobs nor amenities is a convincing explanation for why newcomers come or why they stay. Population decline is correlated with a decrease in available jobs. Even though these regions experience a ‘brain drain’, one analysis in Scotland’s former industrial regions found no shortage of skilled workers (Houston et al., 2008), and therefore jobs would not likely be a draw. Glaeser et al. (2001) have categorised amenities into four types: services and consumer goods, aesthetics or physical setting (with weather being the strongest predictor of economic growth), public services such as schools, and speed at which people can move around. In legacy cities, municipalities have declining resources to upgrade parks, provide new bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, or invest in urban services such as public schools and recreation. They also pay more to address high rates of vacant and abandoned property. In addition, the quality and quantity of retail declines.

Specific place-based factors and opportunities beyond jobs or amenities can attract or retain newcomers. Research on migration to Portland, a city that attracts young, college-educated migrants despite relatively low earnings and high levels of underemployment, demonstrates this. Portland points to the political milieu as an understudied factor for a subset of college-educated young professionals who seek meaningful work and daily life over material gain (Schrock and Jurjevich, 2014). The perceived sense of a place facilitates migration that reflects personal values, allowing the creation of place identity or a relationship with the environment that subsequently builds or reinforces preferences, feelings and values (Proshansky et al., 1983). The political milieu affirms newcomers’ sense of identity as they bond with a new place. Aronowitz (2013) also observed that some young educated workers seek lower priced cities such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh to more easily and affordably secure fulfilling work. Toronto’s local culture produced a creative milieu that attracted fashion designers even though it is a second tier city for fashion. In part, this was because the social safety net helped to offset some of the risks of an uneven industry (Leslie and Brail, 2011). In other cases, natural beauty might be the basis for creative regeneration strategies in small cities that have neither downtown amenities nor thick job markets (Waitt and Gibson, 2009).

A sense of place and people’s attachment to a place also can influence whether people come and stay. Place attachment refers the ways people perceive places, attach meaning to them, and feel connected to people and natural and built landscapes (Hashemnezhad et al., 2013; Manzo and Perkins, 2006), or the affective attachments between people and places (Altman and Low, 1992). Numerous studies have shown that place attachment leads to feelings of loss and grief when people are displaced or neighbourhoods change (Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2011; Gans, 1962; Nelson, 2014), and some suggest that people with a stronger sense of attachment might be more involved in their neighbourhoods (Manzo and Perkins, 2006; Taylor, 1996). Place attachment is strongly correlated with length of residency (Taylor, 1996). Place attachment is generally examined at the neighbourhood scale, and more stability is associated with higher levels of attachment (Taylor, 1996).

Only a few projects directly examined the extent to which place attachment influenced people’s decision to stay in a place they would otherwise have reason to leave. When investigating why people stayed or left shrinking Portuguese cities, one study found economics was the most influential factor that caused people to leave, but the city’s heritage and natural beauty as well as social ties and place attachment were reasons for staying (Guimarães et al., 2016). Attachment to their municipality or region was a factor that kept farmers in higher mountain regions of the French Alps when compared with the middle mountain region, even when their farms were no longer profitable (Hinojosa et al., 2016). Even though newcomers might stay for different reasons than longtime or returning residents, both the sense of place – or how the place is imagined (Wortham-Galvin, 2008) – and how residents form attachments can influence decisions to stay. In New Orleans, young professionals responded to local culture, attempting to adapt even when their social circles were primarily other newcomers, and were actively engaged in communities they created (Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2013). Therefore, through what Henri Lefebvre (1991) called spatial practices, or everyday routines through which residents produced urban spaces, their rhythms and their meanings, people also engage with and grow attached.

Cities have distinct attributes beyond amenities that might align with the preferences of different groups. For example, creative class is a poorly defined concept that encompasses a wide range of knowledge workers who have unique reasons for choosing where to live and work (Hansen and Niedomysl, 2009; Markusen, 2006). Highly skilled migrants have identified jobs as more important to their move decisions than migrants with lower education (Niedomysl and Hansen, 2010). Even similarly situated people prioritise different elements. In a survey of service sector migration to Scotland, both English and Scottish long distant migrants identified employment as the primary reason they moved, but Scottish migrants identified quality of life and housing as significantly more important than did the English migrants (Findlay et al., 2003).

Why people stay once they move can be influenced by quality and way of life factors, either at or away from work. Cooke (2014) argued that cities accumulate skills and knowledge through attracting younger, educated singles, and they retain it through the reduced mobility of middle aged couples. However, it is also possible that some professionals move to global cities to gain experience and connections but subsequently move to places where they would prefer to live (Findlay et al., 2008). Boyle (2006) found that Scottish expatriates living in Dublin identified wages and job availability as primary reasons to come, but after arriving, they valued qualitative aspects of their working life such as relaxed workplaces and flexibility.

The back-to-the-city movement is still selective. Although overall the growth rate in many primary cities has surpassed the suburban growth, in other metropolitan areas, the suburbs continue to grow more rapidly (Frey, 2015). Population increases in select neighbourhoods may not be a harbinger of citywide growth. In New Orleans, the Marigny neighbourhood experienced visible growth and historical housing restoration, increased incomes and property values as well as increased neighbourhood amenities as early as the 1970s (Knopp, 1997) while the city continued to lose population through the 2000s. Even though similar factors drive urban growth in growing and shrinking areas, the reasons college-educated professionals returned to central city neighbourhoods might be different in weak market metropolitan areas (Swanstrom, 2014). Why people move to and say in legacy cities is an important but unexplained dimension of the back-to-the-city movement.

New Orleans as case

New Orleans is a historic city in the southern USA. Referred to as the northernmost city of the Caribbean, its historic architecture, unique cuisine, music, and easy going public culture attract residents and tourists alike to the city and bring them to the streets for Mardi Gras and parades throughout the year. The primary tourist destination, the French Quarter, preserves the historic architecture of the city’s French and Spanish colonial past. African American craftspeople contributed to the ironwork that characterises the French Quarter and mansions throughout the city. African and African American building traditions shaped the city’s shotgun houses and creole cottages, housing types that define the neighbourhoods. The city’s unique cuisine draws on its African and indigenous foodways and its colonial traditions while adapting to contemporary trends.

Music also permeates the city. New Orleans musicians most notably developed and contributed to jazz, gospel and brass bands, and this is reflected in the city’s famous Jazz and Heritage Festival that attracts over 400,000 people annually. The city might be best known as a tourist destination for Mardi Gras. While tourists often come for a weekend of celebration, for residents, Mardi Gras stretches over weeks, as people come out for parades, socialising with family and friends in public places. For locals, Mardi Gras is one of many regular public events in a city where second line parades and music and neighbourhood festivals occur almost weekly.

Yet, prior to 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita led to flooding that devastated New Orleans, the city had experienced decades-long population loss. The city’s 1960 peak population of 627,525 had dropped to an estimated 2005 population of 452,170 residents. The 2005 hurricanes led to flooding that damaged 80% of the housing and the population dropped significantly. The city’s population rebounded and continued to edge upwards (Mack and Plyer, 2014), but the 2015 population estimate of 389,617 was only 62% of the 1960 peak. The city faced the numerous challenges that confront shrunk cities: low tax revenues, high rates of vacant property, low densities that do not support frequent mass transit, too many public facilities for the city to maintain, and inadequate retail, parks and streets.

Prior to the storms, New Orleans was not a destination for college graduates. Many New Orleanians left for college and settled elsewhere. Despite area universities including Tulane, Loyola, Xavier and Dillard that drew students from around the country, educational attainment rates were lower than the national average. In the years following Hurricane Katrina, an apparent influx of young college graduates captured the attention of public officials and business leaders. The attention to a so-called brain gain was exemplified in an 18 August 2007 article entitled ‘N.O. A beacon for young people’ in the New Orleans Times Picayune that celebrated the arrival of young, college-educated professionals (Eggler, 2007). Public sector agencies and philanthropic organisations facilitated their arrival. Teach for America and AmeriCorps provided paid opportunities for recent college graduates. Jewish community organisations created incentives including moving expense assistance, low interest loans, reduced costs to schools, and membership to a synagogue and community centre in an attempt to attract 1000 new Jewish residents (Fausset, 2007). By 2010, the proportion of 25–34 year olds with at least a bachelor’s degree increased from 25% in 2000 up to 29% (Sellers et al., 2012).

After the 2005 hurricanes, the city received an influx of disaster Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) funds and other recovery monies. Because virtually the entire city had been impacted by the disaster, it had discretion about how to use the funds. Many actions furthered amenity-oriented priorities that reflected the preferences of young professionals. The city invested in new amenities including bicycle facilities and a linear park along an unused rail corridor. It also invested in a new park along the river adjacent to a gentrifying neighbourhood that received little flood and wind damage. In this area, the Bywater, the percentage of African American residents dropped from 61% to 31% between 2000 and 2010 and the number of children in the neighbourhood dropped by two-thirds. Household income increased from US$37,454 (2000) to US$54,024 (2008–2012, 2012 dollars) (The Data Center, 2014). The city also revised its food truck regulations to enable new, gourmet food trucks that are associated with middle income professionals as both customers and proprietors while cracking down on informal vending in different parts of the city, primarily associated with African American working class residents (Ehrenfeucht, 2016).

Amenity creation was visible enough that the independent data organisation, The Data Center, included bike paths as an indicator of recovery in its 2013 report New Orleans Index at Eight, a recovery index for the city. In 2014, an upscale Whole Foods grocery store opened (receiving public subsidy) in the Midcity neighbourhood along with a movie theatre and new fitness clubs. By 2014, the public discussion had shifted from attracting and retaining young people to gentrification.

The visible changes in New Orleans in the decade since the 2005 hurricanes makes the city an illustrative case to explore why early and mid career professionals chose to move to or stay in a shrinking city. The attention to newcomers and the potential for urban change increased the participants’ self consciousness and self reflection about their choices. The rapidity by which the job market and opportunities changed also made both decisions and trade-offs apparent in a relatively short period. There were more jobs in the recovery to attract newcomers than other shrinking cities would have, but the circumstances changed rapidly. Jobs disappeared or became less compelling. The city also had more funds to invest in amenity creation, drawing attention to changes in the New Orleans urban fabric and cultural practices. While the extreme circumstances in New Orleans are unique, the phenomenon where professionals are moving to shrunk cities, and popular media attention to cities such as Detroit as open places where newcomers can make a difference, suggests that themes we discuss in the findings are relevant in other cities and situations.

Research design

Between March and July 2009 we conducted semi-structured interviews with 78 young and mid-career professionals who moved or returned to New Orleans after the hurricanes. The 30 to 60 minute interviews addressed three main topics: factors that influenced decisions to come or return to New Orleans; factors that influenced past locational decisions; and work experiences in New Orleans. In 2014 and February 2015, we interviewed 32 of the participants a second time for 30 to 60 minutes. The second interviews focused on changes in work and living situations and what factors influenced those changes. Tables 1 and 2 show the demographics of the participants in 2009 and 2014.

Table 1.

Summary of 2009 interviewees.

			Total
	Male	Female	#	%
White	24	37	61	78.2
Black or African American	7	6	13	16.7
Asian or Asian American	1	3	4	5.1
Total	32	46	78	100.0
Latino/a	0	1	1	1.3

Table 2.

Summary of 2014 interviewees.

			Total
	Male	Female	#	%
White	15	11	26	81.3
Black or African American	1	2	3	9.4
Asian or Asian American	1	2	3	9.4
Total	17	15	32	100.0
Latino/a	0	0	0	0.0

In 2009, 64 participants worked in jobs that directly impacted hurricane recovery. They were employed with the city, state or other public agencies, the school districts, firms that had rebuilding contracts with the city (such as planning, architecture or project management firms), non-profit or for-profit affordable housing developers, and non-profits such as neighbourhood or policy-oriented organisations that focused on rebuilding efforts. The others worked in professions such as arts and fashion, financial services and hospitality.

The original participants were recruited from two of three young professionals listservs active in 2009 – the New Orleans Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals Initiative (NOLA YURP) and the Young Leadership Council (YLC). We also unsuccessfully attempted to solicit interviews through the Urban League of Greater New Orleans Young Professionals. Additionally, we interviewed participants in the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Redevelopment Excellence Rockefeller Fellows Program that placed early and mid career professionals in housing and community development positions. The participants self-identified as professionals by membership in professional organisations or by participation in an educational programme for professionals as well as by responding to the interview request directed at young professionals. In 2014, we sent an email message with a brief survey to the previous participants and asked if they would be interviewed a second time. We sent two follow-up email requests to those who did not respond. Forty-one participants filled out the survey, and we subsequently interviewed 32. Of the 32, 27 were still living in New Orleans at the time of the second interview and five had moved from the city. A professional transcription firm transcribed the interviews and the authors coded and analysed the data using NVivo qualitative analysis software.

This study focuses on the responses of a subgroup of college-educated professionals, those who saw themselves as part of the city’s recovery, and of that subgroup, the people who chose to stay in New Orleans as the recovery waned. The interviewees are not a representative sample and we assume African Americans are significantly underrepresented and Latinas/os are also likely underrepresented. In 2014, we assume that those who stayed in New Orleans responded at a rate higher than those that had left. Both sets of interviews have a selection bias, and we interviewed fewer than half of the original group of participants. The two listservs that responded to our request likely had a disproportionate number of newcomers or people who returned to work in the recovery. The attention to their work instigated their interest in participating. The sense of possibility was weaker in the second interviews. It is possible that those who felt more severe trade-offs or found less satisfaction were also less likely to respond to the request for a second interview. In the first interview, the participants felt a need to emphasise their commitment to New Orleans. If those who no longer felt that chose not to participate in the second interview, the commitment that participants stated to finding a way to get by or the positive dimensions of creating opportunity could be overemphasised.

Findings

In 2015, New Orleans continued to suffer from the range of problems that shrinking and shrunk cities face, including high rates of vacant property and a built environment characterised by poor street paving, missing street lights and uneven quality of parks and other amenities. Given that the city experienced decades of population loss, the objective of the 2009 interviews was to understand why young professionals chose New Orleans as a destination. In the years following Katrina, our participants found an opportunity to contribute to rebuilding a city. The devastation drew attention to New Orleans, and created both purpose and dynamic job possibilities.

Our respondents had arrived in New Orleans prior to the great recession of 2007–2009. During those years, and the years that followed, the ongoing recovery dollars and projects buffered the city from an economic downturn. While this could be a factor that made working in New Orleans relatively better in the subsequent years, many of our respondents found work elsewhere between 2009 and 2014. When respondents who stayed in New Orleans described finding new positions, we asked about whether they looked nationally or regionally, and few who stayed had looked at positions outside of New Orleans.

By 2014, the rebuilding intensity lessened. An influx of public, private and philanthropic resources created initial jobs and the buzz around rebuilding the city. By 2014, most resources were substantially exhausted, which was a reason some participants sought new positions, and the pace of rebuilding had slowed. This provided the opportunity to understand what influenced the participants’ ongoing decisions to stay in New Orleans. Our participants who stayed embraced a way of life they associated with the city, rather than specific amenities or job opportunities. The city’s public culture and job expectations allowed them to spend time with friends and family, casually interact with both friends and acquaintances, and balance personal life with work. Nevertheless, in their perspective, this came with professional trade-offs, leading some to conclude that they had to choose New Orleans over career advancement, and others to earn a living from varied sources.

National visibility and a job

The destruction following the post-hurricane flooding and botched federal response turned attention to New Orleans. The hurricanes made New Orleans visible as a place to seek work, because, in one person’s words, ‘What brought me here specifically was the problems from Hurricane Katrina because I wouldn’t have come to New Orleans otherwise’ (white man, first interview) or, for another ‘ever since Katrina, I wanted to be here, I wanted to do more to help. And I followed the stories in the papers and magazines and journals about what was happening in the recovery process. I thought it was just woeful how slow everything was, and it was like, they need people to help’ (African American woman, first interview). For others, the extreme inequality, the federal response, the deep challenges were a call to action, ‘it was like this is our civil rights struggle. This is our war, in a sense, that we really should be engaged in’ (Latina, first interview).

At the same time, working in New Orleans was a unique professional opportunity through which participants could do something noteworthy, specifically contributing to a city’s renewal. In the words of one participant who chose New Orleans over the Peace Corps, ‘This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something in an education system that is changing so rapidly’ (white woman, first interview). For another who had never been to New Orleans prior to Katrina, ‘it seemed like both an opportunity, but also the chance to do something really meaningful and important’ (African American woman, first interview).

These factors were interrelated. The recovery efforts created an exciting professional atmosphere and job opportunities in a place where they could have impact.

I felt like, really, it was a mixture of an opportunity, and that this is kind of this huge, great American experience and experiment. How would you really rebuild a city if you wanted to deconcentrate poverty and change things? I felt like it was a real opportunity to try to do something different and new. (white woman, first interview)

They turned their attention to New Orleans because of the hurricanes, and the participants sought jobs so that they could assist in the recovery. Three-quarters of the participants found jobs prior to coming to the city. They prioritised professional opportunities in a city and situation that was professionally compelling.

Our participants who were from New Orleans or living in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina spoke of returning to the city or returning to their hometown in a time of crisis, even if they had better opportunities elsewhere. In one person’s words, she left New Orleans during the evacuation and, during that time, she obtained a ‘better job, management title, more money … but then [New Orleans] was more compelling and that was just that I felt that I needed to come back’ (white woman, first interview), or in another’s words ‘I was drawn back to New Orleans. It was almost magnetic and I wanted to be a part of the discussion about rebuilding the city’ (African American man from New Orleans, first interview).

For newcomers and longtime residents alike, moving or returning to New Orleans was an active decision. The hurricanes increased the city’s visibility and created a sense of purpose. This led our participants to seek and find work that allowed them to contribute (Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2013).

A way of life

In the five years between 2009 and 2014, the intensity of the recovery had waned and the sense of focus and purpose had diminished. In the words of one participant, ‘it’s not as exciting as it was a while ago’ (white man, second interview). The participants continued to believe their jobs were valuable and many continued to work in areas such as economic and community development, housing or areas that had social benefits. A majority of the 2014 participants had changed jobs during the five year period and, as a result, actively considered their opportunities in New Orleans.

Our participants described different reasons for staying than moving. They responded to, produced and reproduced a way of life that they valued. For newcomers and returnees, they responded as they adapted to the city’s rhythm and the pace of life was a reason they were reticent to leave. In both 2009 and 2014, our participants emphasised that people in New Orleans prioritised life outside of work equally to or more than work life. They discussed having the time to enjoy activities outside of work and the expectations that they would do so. This was possible because in New Orleans work did not define people’s identities.

It’s exciting in DC because everyone is very mission focused. … in New Orleans, it felt like a nice combination of people being there for the value of what they were doing, the mission they were doing, without having the same sort of attitude that if you weren’t at work, you weren’t doing your job somehow, you were slacking. (white man, first interview)

We do have higher priorities than just being at our desks because somebody may see us there. I think that game is not often played here. (white woman, first interview)

By participating in the city’s extensive public culture and value placed on non-work activities, they reproduced the city’s pace. This also reinforced social networks because ‘When I go listen to music at a festival in the middle of the day here and I will run into somebody that I know’ (white man, second interview). This led to their sense of community, which was another defining factor that they valued, in one person’s words, ‘I love that there’s a real sense of community and pride of place here that I think is hard to get from other big cities’ (white man, second interview). This increased their ability to maintain a network of casual friends, which contributed to feeling connected to other people and part of the city.

There’s enough kind of casual, social situations that makes it easy to continue to be friends. So you see them – you go to a parade or you go to a cookout …– in New York, it was such a commitment to see someone socially that you had to really like the person. (white woman, second interview)

They valued a range of relationships that included everyday interactions with strangers who became acquaintances as well as the casual friends and work colleagues who they saw in public. The combination of work expectations along with public culture and cultural patterns where people stopped to talk and attended festivals led to a way of life they valued. This contributed to the ease of which these connections could be maintained.

I have a whole network of folks that I just keep up not through any sort of intention at all. I run into them, and that’s a nice feeling to have a bit of a small town feeling which is different than New York or DC … where you have to make plans, find the right time, coordinate it. (white man, second interview)

I feel like every time we go out just to the grocery store you see someone you know, or certainly in the working world, cross paths with the same people all the time. And I like that. You can develop more relationships that way. I have lots of casual relationships here and those are really important. It’s important to have your inner circle too, but what I think what makes life fun is like bumping into those people that you just know casually. (white man, second interview)

This was an active process of producing an imagined New Orleans culture and reproducing the patterns they observed. Our participants attributed these cultural patterns to New Orleans and saw this local culture as contributing to the sense of community that the participants identified. When asked, however, newcomers said that their circles were predominantly other newcomers, yet they still placed value on engaging in ways they considered reflective of New Orleans. They described responding to local norms such as talking with neighbours, acquaintances and strangers, and in doing so, participated in and reproduced these norms through their daily practices. As one transplant from New York explained:

Just walking around our block takes 45 minutes because you stop and talk to everyone. And even if you don’t know someone, if they’re out in their yard, you know them by the time you finish going by. (white woman, second interview)

In the 2009 interviews, few participants suggested that the city’s pace of life was a factor that drew them to New Orleans when they decided to leave New York, Washington or the other cities from where they had moved. On the contrary, some participants specifically discussed the pace of work and life as a challenge and at times an impediment to getting work done (Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2013). In 2014, through everyday patterns and the relationships they developed, they became attached and connected to New Orleans, which then became a factor that kept the participants in New Orleans.

The belief that a place is unique has been associated with higher levels of place attachment (Hinojosa et al., 2016), and our participants emphasised that New Orleans was unique in its food culture, music at festivals and clubs, the parades and public culture, and restaurants, ‘All of the things that New Orleans enjoys a positive reputation for, I think are justified. And so the food, and the music, and the neighborhoods, and sort of pace of life are genuinely appealing in a way that I think I would be hard pressed to replicate in other places’ (white man, second interview). He went on to say that New Orleans has ‘culture or lifestyle that is somehow distinct, that is unique to the place, and so, there are a lot of things about New Orleans that are not like any place else’.

The participants also valued conventional amenities associated with gentrification including walkable neighbourhoods, coffee houses and restaurants. They also stated a preference for living in areas with a ‘mix of people’ (white man, second interview). Nevertheless, these were not primary factors that participants identified as reasons for their decisions about living in or leaving New Orleans. As Storper and Manville (2006) suggested, the participants only considered moving to diverse cities with acceptable amenities.

Despite New Orleans’s rich cultural opportunities, the amenities and services supporting everyday life including mass transit and the quality of streets and parks were inferior when compared with other cities in which the participants had lived.

City services in general are lacking. And just a little bit behind the times, the fact that I can’t recycle glass, the fact that the public transit is terribly unreliable. Crime is, I guess, always there to some degree … I hate that I can’t walk home from dinner by myself at night whereas I could in many other places I’ve lived. … The public transit really annoys me regularly. (white woman, second interview)

Although the cost of living was lower than large metropolitan areas such as New York and Washington, the participants noted ‘the cost of living doesn’t compensate for the lower salaries’ (white woman, second interview). Instead, the cost of living seemed high for the level of services, and the high level of violence and the complex educational system were sources of concern for parents and non-parents alike.

Place attachment can be a basis for shared concern (Manzo and Perkins, 2006), but determining whether that occurred in New Orleans is beyond the scope of this project. Even though newcomers including our respondents embraced local cultural practices and expressed concern about being gentrifiers, longtime residents had mixed responses to the influx of newcomers (Ehrenfeucht and Nelson, 2013).

Making it work in New Orleans

The majority of our participants found jobs prior to moving to New Orleans but their work prospects had changed by 2014. By 2014, choosing to live in New Orleans meant fewer possible jobs and they found that ‘the amount of professional opportunities is a really big trade-off’ (white man, second interview). At times they felt ‘a little stuck, and that’s where you get into the reality of New Orleans being a small city and feeling even smaller’ (white woman, second interview).

The pressure being this is a small market, and there’s only five jobs. If I don’t take this one, will another one ever come along? … I interviewed for a job at the port that I knew from the beginning wasn’t the right fit … but I was like, it’s the only job at the port, you know? (white woman, second interview)

Our participants found their job opportunities limited even though they considered their current jobs acceptable and in most cases challenging for the present.¹ They discussed how extensive networks helped them obtain the new jobs, but they saw few prospects for career advancement.

I’ve thought about what I want to do, where do I see myself past this position in my career, so I’ve looked at other opportunities in other cities and other companies where they have a bigger footprint. … I see opportunities in the New Orleans region are very limited in housing development. (African American women, second interview)

There’s not like big consulting firms here that do, like what I do now is performance management and analytics. And there’s not really any other place in town that does that here. … Another option would be to go into some sort of management position of a non-profit or something that’s involved, and policy. But those jobs are kind of few and far between. (white man, second interview)

Given the opportunities in New Orleans, many participants discussed what appeared to be a trade-off between career advancement and life quality. As one participant explained why she returned to New Orleans after moving to Washington, DC:

I mean I loved my job … I just didn’t love Washington, DC. It got to the point where I was choosing between the quality of work and the projection of my career and then the overall quality of life. (Asian American woman, second interview)

The words of another participant captured the analysis that the participants had about their opportunities.

If you pick New Orleans, you’re not picking your career in some respects. That’s not to say that you can’t have a very successful career and can’t make plenty of money and be very happy and have an excellent life. But you’re picking New Orleans. (white man, second interview)

Picking New Orleans not only meant that you chose life quality but that they also chose to be less career oriented. For our participants, this was an active adjustment to the opportunities they found.

I think it would be really hard here to have a life that was really career oriented because at least in my experience I feel like a lot of concessions have to be made in your professional life. But they are balanced, they’re outweighed by the other things that you get from living here, but I would say that if you’re really committed to staying in the city and making your life here, you have to kind of release a little bit of ambition, and I really don’t want to say that, that sounds bad, but I think that’s the way it is, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe we’re all happier because of it. (white woman, second interview)

She went on to say: ‘For the future, for the immediate [future], my life is here in New Orleans, which means that I will always figure it out, figure out some way to keep employed’.

The need to ‘figure it out’ and piece together a career was echoed by many of our participants. Some turned to self-employment or entrepreneurship. In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, entrepreneurial activity grew faster than the national average (Plyer et al., 2013), and local officials and the popular press have glorified entrepreneurship in the city’s recovery and renaissance. A third of the participants in the second set of interviews had attempted to develop a new firm or company. Self-employment and entrepreneurship are easier to pursue in smaller, more affordable cities with lower barriers to entry (Nelson and Ehrenfeucht, 2017; Schrock and Jurjevich, 2014). For most of our participants, however, self-employment or entrepreneurship was not a choice to gain more independence or autonomy in their work lives. Instead, it was a response to few employment alternatives. As one participant who followed his wife to New Orleans described:

There just aren’t enough career paths in New Orleans … What I’ve seen is that you have to kind of cobble a career together. So I teach at [a university] in addition to my consulting firm, in addition to a couple other ways I found to make ends meet … I’m not sure how everyone else is cobbling together their careers, but it strikes me that this seems to be a necessity in New Orleans. (white man, second interview)

Another participant, who had worked for a number of non-profits before opening her own service-oriented business, reflected on her career decision and on necessity entrepreneurialism more broadly.

I think if there were more options I probably wouldn’t be running my own business. A lot of people start their own projects and their own non-profits, their own businesses here because they can’t do what they [want] … Those things don’t exist. It creates an entrepreneurship and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. (Asian American woman, second interview)

With employment opportunities limited by a thin labour market, self-employment and entrepreneurship was a way to stay in the city.

In a more competitive or higher market city, I probably would have needed to go to school to get some of the jobs I’ve had. New Orleans, in its deficit, also presents opportunity for people to show up, to create a space for yourself. (Asian American woman, first interview)

Their initiatives ranged from real estate development and social community development ventures as well as businesses such as coffee houses. These efforts did not always succeed or our participants were not yet able to support themselves (and at times their business partners). Many of our participants continued to work full time while seeking to build a business or they turned to additional sources of income, such as renting rooms as vacation rentals, to augment low salaries.

Conclusions

Prior to the 2005 hurricanes, New Orleans, like other shrinking cities, had relatively few job opportunities and declining amenities and services. The damage from the 2005 hurricanes created national visibility, jobs and a sense of possibility. Because of this, college-educated professionals came to New Orleans for work. Detroit’s bankruptcy and media attention on urban shrinkage has made the phenomenon visible in another context, and popular narratives describe shrinking cities as open to new ideas and creativity. This project suggests visibility along with possibility might be one factor influencing why people move to these cities.

The reasons people chose to stay differed from why they came. As the rebuilding period passed, the city still had problems that shrunk cities face. The participants were aware of the limited job possibilities as well as the poor quality of urban services and local amenities. However, they valued their lives in New Orleans and their relationships and connections. Further research is needed to understand whether residents in other mid-sized cities feel similar levels of connectedness or whether this came from the city’s public culture or the frenetic post-Katrina environment. If the latter, this could be partially attributed to the policy initiatives that forged networks and social connections. This also raises questions about the process by which people become newly attached to cities how this influences subsequent moves.

Our participants also found work through their networks and identified networks as reasons they felt connected. If policies connect newcomers to other newcomers, these initiatives could also reduce opportunities for longtime residents. In the five-year time period, few participants had successfully created new firms or initiatives even though many had tried. However numerous participants dealt with limited possibilities by augmenting their primary jobs with income from different sources or turning to jobs outside of their intended career.

Because promised outcomes from attracting young college-educated residents are great and, in legacy cities, previous economic development investments have been unsuccessful, amenity creation as economic development strategy has been irresistible. Consumption based amenities require no long-term societal investment in people unlike other forms of workforce development and education and they do not require attracting new industry. However, the amenities themselves, while desirable, in this case had little impact on what people identified as reasons for coming to New Orleans or reasons for staying. Instead, the qualitative aspects of their daily lives allowed them to build and maintain relationships, which led to jobs and attachments, and shaped their decisions in a situation where neither job opportunities nor amenities were the best available among their perceived choices.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was partially funded through a SCoRe grant from the University of New Orleans.

Notes

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