New Orleans

With Hurricane Katrina doing a lot of damage on New Orleans during the past couple of weeks, there is a lot of talk that New Orleans will never be the same again, and the city maybe finished as a major city. I kind of disagree, because if you look at past history there were many cities that suffered much worse disasters than New Orleans and yet bounced back. First example I can think of is the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That killed hundreds of people and destroyed much of the city, yet today San Francisco is one of the biggest metro areas in the country. Another example is European cities during World War II. Many cities suffered heavy damage from bombing. Some cities such as London, Dresden, Berlin, and Warsaw, were pretty much destroyed. Yet 60 years after WWII all those cities are thriving. The best example I can think of is a city that has gone through destruction from both natural disasters and war is Tokyo Japan. Not only did Tokyo suffer one of the worst earthquakes in modern times (http://www.eas.slu.edu/Earthquake_Center/1923EQ/) during the 1920’s but it also was heavily bombed during the end of World War II. Yet is Tokyo some ghost town today? No, by many estimates the Tokyo metropolitan area is the most populated of any city in the world. (it is #1 according to this link http://www.citypopulation.de/World.html) So my point is that many cities have suffered through destruction that is much much worst than New Orleans and they have all rebuilt and continue to be major cities, so I don't see why New Orleans can't be the same.