Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella (review)

In Cityscapes of New Orleans, Richard Campanella presents a wide-ranging collection of short essays on the cultural geography of New Orleans written originally as monthly or quarterly columns for the local newspaper (the New Orleans Times-Picayune), the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans (Preservation in Print), or the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (Louisiana Cultural Vistas). His purpose, he writes, "is spatial explanation—elucidating the why behind the where" (p. xiii). In seventy-seven separate essays, Campanella does just that, exploring and explaining the shape and culture of the city, from its street grids and parcel lines to its architecture and neighborhoods. Cityscapes of New Orleans is organized in five sections: "People, Patterns, and Place"; "Architectural Geographies and the Built Environment"; "Urban Geographies"; "Regional Geographies"; and "Disaster and Recovery."

The first section, "People, Patterns, and Place," orients the reader to both the city and Campanella's engaging storytelling style. Although not essential, it is helpful if the reader has some basic familiarity with the layout and culture of New Orleans. Campanella begins with an explanation of the development of the city's different neighborhoods and neighborhood identities over time before diving into more detailed and nuanced stories about topics such as the development of New Orleans's neutral ground (the city's peculiar name for street medians), the spatial distribution of the slave trade in the city, gentrification, and "mapping the geography of cool" (p. 72). Wide-ranging and eclectic, these stories help the reader understand aspects of the city's cultural geography from initial settlement to today.

Architectural Geographies and the Built Environment," the second and longest section, follows a more chronological approach and details the evolution of architectural styles in the city. Beginning with New Orleans's early French Creole and shotgun-style buildings, Campanella shows how the built environment changed over time and how the various architectural fads popular across the country influenced the landscape of the city over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also discusses the individual histories of a number of landmark buildings, many of which are no longer extant. Closing the section with the tale of the loss to arson of a neglected plantation house in the city, Campanella reminds the reader of the importance of preservation to the local economy and of the high cost of waiting too long to "seize the moment" and save important historic buildings (p. 202). Although the book is occasionally repetitive when topics overlap, Campanella never ceases to delight and inform.

In the third section, "Urban Geographies," Campanella explores mysteries in the urban landscape that a greater understanding of history and geography help explain. From the existence of the Pine Island Trend, a remnant of a coastal barrier island beneath portions of the city, to why certain streets jog the way they do or why a small urban forest still exists in Gentilly, Campanella engages the reader with small doses of a larger understanding of how the world in which we live today has been created over time by both natural and cultural forces.

Campanella continues his unique odyssey into New Orleans's past and present in the last two sections, "Regional Geographies" and "Disaster and Recovery." Pulling the larger region into his analysis and offering insights on Louisiana's topography (the third-lowest and third-flattest state in the country), musical listening habits, and response to disasters from the early nineteenth century to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Campanella continues to remind the reader of how today's reality is shaped by what happened in the past. Essential reading for anyone who loves New Orleans, the development of American urban landscapes, or both, Cityscapes of New Orleans is a rich and diverse telling of New Orleans's rich and diverse history.