When Mary Rowe, the head of the Canadian Urban Institute, moved to New Orleans to begin a fellowship in the fall of 2005, she found herself in a city that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina — buildings, neighbourhoods, and lives literally swept away when the levees broke. Also gone, as New Orleans’ poorest residents quickly discovered, were many of the city’s social and governmental systems — which had become notoriously corrupt and ineffective over decades.
