Richard Campanella, Baton Rouge Advocate

Richard Campanella

Baton Rouge Advocate

New Orleans, LA, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Baton Rouge Advocate
  • NOLA.com
  • The Atlantic
  • Places Journal

Past articles by Richard:

City's first recorded hurricane was a monster. But it cleared the way for today's urban center.

The first gusts arrived on Sept. 10, 1722, jostling ships docked along the riverfront and growing steadier overnight. Around 9 a.m. next morning, “a great wind” came, wrote Adrien de → Read More

New Orleans might look very different today if these unpredictable moments never happened

Contingency — that is, the incidental and unforeseeable nature of events, and the many ways things could have played out differently — undergirds history. Saints fans got a lesson of → Read More

A year after New Orleans’ foundation, its first flood

Next time you’re at the French Quarter riverfront, observe the height of the Mississippi River, which has been at or near flood stage for weeks. → Read More

Bourbon Street's 300 block: The history of French Quarter land use, in one streetscape

Of all the streetscapes in the French Quarter, few have seen more representative land-use change than the 300 block of Bourbon Street. The river side of that block is a microcosm of the historical geography of the city’s oldest neighborhood, having transformed from a forest to a village, to an urban mix of homes and shops, to an industrial site, to a notorious “lake” briefly in the 1960s, and… → Read More

Bridging decisions: Siting of river bridges had lasting effects on region’s urban geography

Note: Today The New Orleans Advocate debuts a monthly feature, “Geographies of New Orleans,” in which Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella explores aspects of our region’s physical, urban and human → Read More

Why are New Orleanians ditching their cars for biking, walking and jogging?

"City" comes from the Latin civis, which means citizen, and cities work best when their citizenry interacts. → Read More

How Humans Sank New Orleans

Engineering put the Crescent City below sea level. Now, its future is at risk. → Read More

People-Mapping Through Google Street View

A study comparing images of New Orleans in 2007 and 2016 found a striking increase in the number of people (and bicycles) occupying public space. → Read More

Culture wars led to New Orleans' most peculiar experiment in city management

Culture wars and ethnic rivalry lead to the division of the city into three distinct municipalities. → Read More

How Gentilly's wild 'Accidental Forest' escaped development for centuries

Tucked along the western side of the London Avenue Canal, lakeside of Virgil Boulevard in the Fillmore-Dillard section of Gentilly, lies a last fragment of the storied New Orleans backswamp, that vast, damp, dense forest which has long since been felled by axes, drained by pumps and populated by us. → Read More

As marshes erode, how many coastal communities can we save?: Richard Campanella

Ten years ago this month, thousands of displaced New Orleanians found themselves in the throes of a major life decision. Should they return and rebuild despite great uncertainty, or cast their lot elsewhere? In the foreseeable future, residents of coastal... → Read More

4 reasons why New Orleans survived the 'Great Storm of 1915'

When 1915 hurricane struck New Orleans, wind caused more damage than water. → Read More

4 reasons why New Orleans survived the 'Great Storm of 1915'

When 1915 hurricane struck New Orleans, wind caused more damage than water. → Read More

Why Katrina couldn't 'wipe the slate clean' in New Orleans

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans eschewed grand recovery plans -- and came back anyway. → Read More

The Ozone Belt: How St. Tammany turned health-tourism into big business — for the wrong reasons

New Orleanians today generally think of St. Tammany Parish as the north shore. Before the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opened in 1956, city dwellers called it "across the lake." Others described all of Louisiana between the Pearl and Mississippi rivers as... → Read More

Two historic courthouses and a neighborhood rivalry that helped shape the downtown cityscape

This spring marks the 100th anniversary of the John Minor Wisdom U. S. Court of Appeals Building. Home to the federal court's Fifth Circuit, the magnificent landmark at 600 Camp St. was initially conceived for a different purpose, and nearly... → Read More

The Great Katrina Footprint Debate 10 years later: Richard Campanella

In the heady aftermath of the Katrina deluge, New Orleanians grappled with the possibility that certain neighborhoods would be expropriated for green space and their city's urban footprint "shrunk." As a participant-observer in that debate, I penned a guest editorial... → Read More

A tale of two universities: Leland, Tulane and an early example of gentrification

The area around Audubon Park, Tulane and Loyola universities ranks today among New Orleans' most affluent neighborhoods. But 150 years ago, it was barely urbanized, only sporadically wealthy and not in New Orleans. It fell within Jefferson, adjacent to Carrollton,... → Read More

Plantations, a pepper sauce and the peculiar history of the 7th Ward 'labyrinth'

Things at odd angles tell interesting stories. The New Orleans cityscape abounds in such eccentricities -- misaligned streets, odd-shaped blocks, off-axis houses -- and like archeological artifacts, they shed light on decisions from centuries ago. Such is the case for... → Read More

The lost history of New Orleans' two Chinatowns

New Orleans once had a Chinatown -- two, in fact. Both are long gone and barely discernible today, though artist Maria Möller hopes to change that this weekend. More on that in a minute. First, to understand how Chinatown formed,... → Read More