Cinematic Drone Services

Compared to crewed aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too “dull, dirty or dangerous”^[4] for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications,^[5] such as policing and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, smuggling,^[6] and drone racing. Civilian UAVs now vastly outnumber military UAVs, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015.^{[citation needed]}

The term drone, more widely used by the public, was coined in reference to the early remotely-flown target aircraft used for practice firing of a battleship’s guns, and the term was first used with the 1920s Fairey Queen and 1930’s de Havilland Queen Bee target aircraft. These two were followed in service by the similarly-named Airspeed Queen Wasp and Miles Queen Martinet, before ultimate replacement by the GAF Jindivik.^[7]

The term unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was adopted by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States Federal Aviation Administration in 2005 according to their Unmanned Aircraft System Roadmap 2005–2030.^[8] The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the British Civil Aviation Authority adopted this term, also used in the European Union’s Single-European-Sky (SES) Air-Traffic-Management (ATM) Research (SESAR Joint Undertaking) roadmap for 2020.^[9] This term emphasizes the importance of elements other than the aircraft. It includes elements such as ground control stations, data links and other support equipment. A similar term is an unmanned-aircraft vehicle system (UAVS), remotely piloted aerial vehicle (RPAV), remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS).^[10] Many similar terms are in use.

A UAV is defined as a “powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload”.^[11] Therefore, missiles are not considered UAVs because the vehicle itself is a weapon that is not reused, though it is also uncrewed and in some cases remotely guided.

The relation of UAVs to remote controlled model aircraft is unclear.^{[citation needed]} UAVs may or may not include model aircraft. Some jurisdictions base their definition on size or weight; however, the US Federal Aviation Administration defines any uncrewed flying craft as a UAV regardless of size. For recreational uses, a drone (as opposed to a UAV) is a model aircraft that has first-person video, autonomous capabilities, or both.^[12]

The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred on July 1849,^[14] serving as a balloon carrier (the precursor to the aircraft carrier)^[15] in the first offensive use of air power in naval aviation.^[16][17][18] Austrian forces besieging Venice attempted to launch some 200 incendiary balloons at the besieged city. The balloons were launched mainly from land; however, some were also launched from the Austrian ship SMS Vulcano. At least one bomb fell in the city; however, due to the wind changing after launch, most of the balloons missed their target, and some drifted back over Austrian lines and the launching ship Vulcano.^[19][20][21]

UAV innovations started in the early 1900s and originally focused on providing practice targets for training military personnel. UAV development continued during World War I, when the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company invented a pilotless aerial torpedo that would explode at a preset time.^[22]

The earliest attempt at a powered UAV was A. M. Low‘s “Aerial Target” in 1916.^[23] Nikola Tesla described a fleet of uncrewed aerial combat vehicles in 1915.^[24] Advances followed during and after World War I, including the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane. This development also inspired the development of the Kettering Bug by Charles Kettering from Dayton, Ohio. This was initially meant as an uncrewed plane that would carry an explosive payload to a predetermined target. The first scaled remote piloted vehicle was developed by film star and model-airplane enthusiast Reginald Denny in 1935.^[23] More emerged during World War II – used both to train antiaircraft gunners and to fly attack missions. Nazi Germany produced and used various UAV aircraft during the war. Jet engines entered service after World War II in vehicles such as the Australian GAF Jindivik, and Teledyne Ryan Firebee I of 1951, while companies like Beechcraft offered their Model 1001 for the U.S. Navy in 1955.^[23] Nevertheless, they were little more than remote-controlled airplanes until the Vietnam War.

In 1959, the U.S. Air Force, concerned about losing pilots over hostile territory, began planning for the use of uncrewed aircraft.^[25] Planning intensified after the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 in 1960. Within days, a highly classified UAV program started under the code name of “Red Wagon”.^[26] The August 1964 clash in the Tonkin Gulf between naval units of the U.S. and North Vietnamese Navy initiated America’s highly classified UAVs (Ryan Model 147, Ryan AQM-91 Firefly, Lockheed D-21) into their first combat missions of the Vietnam War.^[27] When the Chinese government^[28] showed photographs of downed U.S. UAVs via Wide World Photos,^[29] the official U.S. response was “no comment”.

During the War of Attrition (1967–1970) the first tactical UAVs installed with reconnaissance cameras were first tested by the Israeli intelligence, successfully bringing photos from across the Suez canal. This was the first time that tactical UAVs, which could be launched and landed on any short runway (unlike the heavier jet-based UAVs), were developed and tested in battle.^[30]

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel used UAVs as decoys to spur opposing forces into wasting expensive anti-aircraft missiles.^[31] After the 1973 Yom Kippur war, a few key people from the team that developed this early UAV joined a small startup company that aimed to develop UAVs into a commercial product, eventually purchased by Tadiran and leading to the development of the first Israeli UVA.^{[32][pages needed]}

In 1973, the U.S. military officially confirmed that they had been using UAVs in Southeast Asia (Vietnam).^[33] Over 5,000 U.S. airmen had been killed and over 1,000 more were missing or captured. The USAF 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing flew about 3,435 UAV missions during the war^[34] at a cost of about 554 UAVs lost to all causes. In the words of USAF General George S. Brown, Commander, Air Force Systems Command, in 1972, “The only reason we need (UAVs) is that we don’t want to needlessly expend the man in the cockpit.”^[35] Later that year, General John C. Meyer, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, stated, “we let the drone do the high-risk flying … the loss rate is high, but we are willing to risk more of them …they save lives!”^[35]

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile batteries in Egypt and Syria caused heavy damage to Israeli fighter jets. As a result, Israel developed the first UAV with real-time surveillance.^[36][37][38] The images and radar decoys provided by these UAVs helped Israel to completely neutralize the Syrian air defenses at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War, resulting in no pilots downed.^[39] The first time UAVs were used as proof-of-concept of super-agility post-stall controlled flight in combat-flight simulations involved tailless, stealth technology-based, three-dimensional thrust vectoring flight control, jet-steering UAVs in Israel in 1987.^[40]

With the maturing and miniaturization of applicable technologies in the 1980s and 1990s, interest in UAVs grew within the higher echelons of the U.S. military. In the 1990s, the U.S. DoD gave a contract to AAI Corporation along with Israeli company Malat. The U.S. Navy bought the AAI Pioneer UAV that AAI and Malat developed jointly. Many of these UAVs saw service in the 1991 Gulf War. UAVs demonstrated the possibility of cheaper, more capable fighting machines, deployable without risk to aircrews. Initial generations primarily involved surveillance aircraft, but some carried armaments, such as the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, that launched AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles.

CAPECON was a European Union project to develop UAVs,^[41] running from 1 May 2002 to 31 December 2005.^[42]

As of 2012, the USAF employed 7,494 UAVs – almost one in three USAF aircraft.^[43][44] The Central Intelligence Agency also operated UAVs.^[45]

In 2013 at least 50 countries used UAVs. China, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and others designed and built their own varieties.

Classification[edit]

UAVs typically fall into one of six functional categories (although multi-role airframe platforms are becoming more prevalent):

• Target and decoy – providing ground and aerial gunnery a target that simulates an enemy aircraft or missile
• Reconnaissance – providing battlefield intelligence
• Combat – providing attack capability for high-risk missions (see: Unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV))
• Logistics – delivering cargo
• Research and development – improve UAV technologies
• Civil and commercial UAVs – agriculture, aerial photography, data collection

•  

  Unmanned Versatile Aircraft (originally a 2-seater Pipistrel Sinus)

Classifications according to aircraft weight are quite simpler:

• Micro air vehicle (MAV) – the smallest UAVs that can weigh less than 1g
• Miniature UAV (also called SUAS) – approximately less than 25 kg
• Heavier UAVs

UAV components[edit]

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Crewed and uncrewed aircraft of the same type generally have recognizably similar physical components. The main exceptions are the cockpit and environmental control system or life support systems. Some UAVs carry payloads (such as a camera) that weigh considerably less than an adult human, and as a result can be considerably smaller. Though they carry heavy payloads, weaponized military UAVs are lighter than their crewed counterparts with comparable armaments.

Small civilian UAVs have no life-critical systems, and can thus be built out of lighter but less sturdy materials and shapes, and can use less robustly tested electronic control systems. For small UAVs, the quadcopter design has become popular, though this layout is rarely used for crewed aircraft. Miniaturization means that less-powerful propulsion technologies can be used that are not feasible for crewed aircraft, such as small electric motors and batteries.

Control systems for UAVs are often different than crewed craft. For remote human control, a camera and video link almost always replace the cockpit windows; radio-transmitted digital commands replace physical cockpit controls. Autopilot software is used on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft, with varying feature sets.

Body[edit]

The primary difference for planes is the absence of the cockpit area and its windows. Tailless quadcopters are a common form factor for rotary wing UAVs while tailed mono- and bi-copters are common for crewed platforms.^[48]

Power supply and platform[edit]

Small UAVs mostly use lithium-polymer batteries (Li-Po), while larger vehicles rely on conventional airplane engines. Scale or size of aircraft is not the defining or limiting characteristic of energy supply for a UAV. At present,^[when?] the energy density of Li-Po is far less than gasoline. The record of travel for a UAV (built from balsa wood and mylar skin) across the North Atlantic Ocean is held by a gasoline model airplane or UAV. Manard Hill in “in 2003 when one of his creations flew 1,882 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on less than a gallon of fuel” holds this record. See:^[49] Electric power is used as less work is required for a flight and electric motors are quieter. Also, properly designed, the thrust to weight ratio for an electric or gasoline motor driving a propeller can hover or climb vertically. Botmite airplane is an example of an electric UAV which can climb vertically.^[50]

Battery elimination circuitry (BEC) is used to centralize power distribution and often harbors a microcontroller unit (MCU). Costlier switching BECs diminish heating on the platform.

Computing[edit]

UAV computing capability followed the advances of computing technology, beginning with analog controls and evolving into microcontrollers, then system-on-a-chip (SOC) and single-board computers (SBC).

System hardware for small UAVs is often called the flight controller (FC), flight controller board (FCB) or autopilot.

Sensors[edit]

Position and movement sensors give information about the aircraft state. Exteroceptive sensors deal with external information like distance measurements, while exproprioceptive ones correlate internal and external states.^[51]

Non-cooperative sensors are able to detect targets autonomously so they are used for separation assurance and collision avoidance.^[52]

Degrees of freedom (DOF) refers to both the amount and quality of sensors on board: 6 DOF implies 3-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers (a typical inertial measurement unit – IMU), 9 DOF refers to an IMU plus a compass, 10 DOF adds a barometer and 11 DOF usually adds a GPS receiver.^[53]

Actuators[edit]

UAV actuators include digital electronic speed controllers (which control the RPM of the motors) linked to motors/engines and propellers, servomotors (for planes and helicopters mostly), weapons, payload actuators, LEDs and speakers.

Software[edit]

UAV software called the flight stack or autopilot. UAVs are real-time systems that require rapid response to changing sensor data. Examples include Raspberry Pis, Beagleboards, etc. shielded with NavIO, PXFMini, etc. or designed from scratch such as Nuttx, preemptive-RT Linux, Xenomai, Orocos-Robot Operating System or DDS-ROS 2.0.

Civil-use open-source stacks include:

Loop principles[edit]

UAVs employ open-loop, closed-loop or hybrid control architectures.

• Open loop – This type provides a positive control signal (faster, slower, left, right, up, down) without incorporating feedback from sensor data.
• Closed loop – This type incorporates sensor feedback to adjust behavior (reduce speed to reflect tailwind, move to altitude 300 feet). The PID controller is common. Sometimes, feedforward is employed, transferring the need to close the loop further.^[54]

Flight controls[edit]

UAVs can be programmed to perform aggressive manœuvres or landing/perching on inclined surfaces,^[55] and then to climb toward better communication spots.^[56] Some UAVs can control flight with varying flight modelisation,^[57][58] such as VTOL designs.

UAVs can also implement perching on a flat vertical surface.^[59]

Communications[edit]

Most UAVs use a radio for remote control and exchange of video and other data. Early UAVs had only narrowband uplink. Downlinks came later. These bi-directional narrowband radio links carried command and control (C&C) and telemetry data about the status of aircraft systems to the remote operator. For very long range flights, military UAVs also use satellite receivers as part of satellite navigation systems. In cases when video transmission was required, the UAVs will implement a separate analog video radio link.

In the most modern UAV applications, video transmission is required. So instead of having 2 separate links for C&C, telemetry and video traffic, a broadband link is used to carry all types of data on a single radio link. These broadband links can leverage quality of service techniques to optimize the C&C traffic for low latency. Usually these broadband links carry TCP/IP traffic that can be routed over the Internet.

The radio signal from the operator side can be issued from either:

• Ground control – a human operating a radio transmitter/receiver, a smartphone, a tablet, a computer, or the original meaning of a military ground control station (GCS). Recently control from wearable devices,^[60] human movement recognition, human brain waves^[61] was also demonstrated.
• Remote network system, such as satellite duplex data links for some military powers.^[62] Downstream digital video over mobile networks has also entered consumer markets,^[63] while direct UAV control uplink over the cellular mesh and LTE have been demonstrated and are in trials.^[64]
• Another aircraft, serving as a relay or mobile control station – military manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T).^[65]
• A protocol MAVLink is increasingly becoming popular to carry command and control data between the ground control and the vehicle

Autonomy[edit]

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ICAO classifies uncrewed aircraft as either remotely piloted aircraft or fully autonomous.^{[citation needed]} Actual UAVs may offer intermediate degrees of autonomy. E.g., a vehicle that is remotely piloted in most contexts may have an autonomous return-to-base operation.

Basic autonomy comes from proprioceptive sensors. Advanced autonomy calls for situational awareness, knowledge about the environment surrounding the aircraft from exterioceptive sensors: sensor fusion integrates information from multiple sensors.^[51]

Basic principles[edit]

One way to achieve autonomous control employs multiple control-loop layers, as in hierarchical control systems. As of 2016 the low-layer loops (i.e. for flight control) tick as fast as 32,000 times per second, while higher-level loops may cycle once per second. The principle is to decompose the aircraft’s behavior into manageable “chunks”, or states, with known transitions. Hierarchical control system types range from simple scripts to finite state machines, behavior trees and hierarchical task planners. The most common control mechanism used in these layers is the PID controller which can be used to achieve hover for a quadcopter by using data from the IMU to calculate precise inputs for the electronic speed controllers and motors.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of mid-layer algorithms:

• Path planning: determining an optimal path for vehicle to follow while meeting mission objectives and constraints, such as obstacles or fuel requirements
• Trajectory generation (motion planning): determining control maneuvers to take in order to follow a given path or to go from one location to another^[66][67]
• Trajectory regulation: constraining a vehicle within some tolerance to a trajectory

Evolved UAV hierarchical task planners use methods like state tree searches or genetic algorithms.^[68]UAV’s degrees of autonomy

UAV manufacturers often build in specific autonomous operations, such as:

• Self-level: attitude stabilization on the pitch and roll axes.
• Altitude hold: The aircraft maintains its altitude using barometric or ground sensors.
• Hover/position hold: Keep level pitch and roll, stable yaw heading and altitude while maintaining position using GNSS or inertal sensors.
• Headless mode: Pitch control relative to the position of the pilot rather than relative to the vehicle’s axes.
• Care-free: automatic roll and yaw control while moving horizontally
• Take-off and landing (using a variety of aircraft or ground-based sensors and systems; see also:Autoland)
• Failsafe: automatic landing or return-to-home upon loss of control signal
• Return-to-home: Fly back to the point of takeoff (often gaining altitude first to avoid possible intervening obstructions such as trees or buildings).
• Follow-me: Maintain relative position to a moving pilot or other object using GNSS, image recognition or homing beacon.
• GPS waypoint navigation: Using GNSS to navigate to an intermediate location on a travel path.
• Orbit around an object: Similar to Follow-me but continuously circle a target.
• Pre-programmed aerobatics (such as rolls and loops)

Full autonomy is available for specific tasks, such as airborne refueling^[69] or ground-based battery switching; but higher-level tasks call for greater computing, sensing and actuating capabilities. One approach to quantifying autonomous capabilities is based on OODA terminology, as suggested by a 2002 US Air Force Research Laboratory, and used in the table below:^[70]

Medium levels of autonomy, such as reactive autonomy and high levels using cognitive autonomy, have already been achieved to some extent and are very active research fields.

Reactive autonomy, such as collective flight, real-time collision avoidance, wall following and corridor centring, relies on telecommunication and situational awareness provided by range sensors: optic flow,^[71] lidars (light radars), radars, sonars.

Most range sensors analyze electromagnetic radiation, reflected off the environment and coming to the sensor. The cameras (for visual flow) act as simple receivers. Lidars, radars and sonars (with sound mechanical waves) emit and receive waves, measuring the round-trip transit time. UAV cameras do not require emitting power, reducing total consumption.

Radars and sonars are mostly used for military applications.

Reactive autonomy has in some forms already reached consumer markets: it may be widely available in less than a decade.^[51]

SLAM combines odometry and external data to represent the world and the position of the UAV in it in three dimensions. High-altitude outdoor navigation does not require large vertical fields-of-view and can rely on GPS coordinates (which makes it simple mapping rather than SLAM).^[72]

Two related research fields are photogrammetry and LIDAR, especially in low-altitude and indoor 3D environments.

• Indoor photogrammetric and stereophotogrammetric SLAM has been demonstrated with quadcopters.^[73]
• Lidar platforms with heavy, costly and gimbaled traditional laser platforms are proven. Research attempts to address production cost, 2D to 3D expansion, power-to-range ratio, weight and dimensions.^[74][75] LED range-finding applications are commercialized for low-distance sensing capabilities. Research investigates hybridization between light emission and computing power: phased array spatial light modulators,^[76][77] and frequency-modulated-continuous-wave (FMCW) MEMS-tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).^[78]

Swarming[edit]

Robot swarming refers to networks of agents able to dynamically reconfigure as elements leave or enter the network. They provide greater flexibility than multi-agent cooperation. Swarming may open the path to data fusion. Some bio-inspired flight swarms use steering behaviors and flocking.^{[clarification needed]}

Future military potential[edit]

In the military sector, American Predators and Reapers are made for counterterrorism operations and in war zones in which the enemy lacks sufficient firepower to shoot them down. They are not designed to withstand antiaircraft defenses or air-to-air combat. In September 2013, the chief of the US Air Combat Command stated that current UAVs were “useless in a contested environment” unless crewed aircraft were there to protect them.[167] A 2012 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report speculated that in the future, UAVs may be able to perform tasks beyond intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strikes; the CRS report listed air-to-air combat (“a more difficult future task”) as possible future undertakings.[168] The Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013-2038 foresees a more important place for UAVs in combat.[169] Issues include extended capabilities, human-UAV interaction, managing increased information flux, increased autonomy and developing UAV-specific munitions.[169] DARPA‘s project of systems of systems,^[79] or General Atomics work may augur future warfare scenarios, the latter disclosing Avenger swarms equipped with High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS).^[80]

Cognitive radio[edit]

Cognitive radio^{[clarification needed]} technology may have UAV applications.^[81]

Learning capabilities[edit]

UAVs may exploit distributed neural networks.^[51]

The global military UAV market is dominated by companies based in the United States and Israel. By sale numbers, The US held over 60% military-market share in 2017. Four of top five military UAV manufactures are American including General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, followed by the Chinese company CASC.^[82] Israel companies mainly focus on small surveillance UAV system and by quantity of drones, Israel exported 60.7% (2014) of UAV on the market while the United States export 23.9% (2014); top importers of military UAV are The United Kingdom (33.9%) and India (13.2%). United States alone operated over 9,000 military UAVs in 2014.^[83] General Atomics is the dominant manufacturer with the Global Hawk and Predator/Mariner systems product-line.

The civilian drone market is dominated by Chinese companies. Chinese drone manufacturer DJI alone has 75% of civilian-market share in 2017 with $11 billion forecast global sales in 2020.^[84] Followed by French company Parrot with $110m and US company 3DRobotics with $21.6m in 2014.^[85] As of March 2018, more than one million UAVs (878,000 hobbyist and 122,000 commercial) were registered with the U.S. FAA. 2018 NPD point to consumers increasingly purchasing drones with more advanced features with 33 percent growth in both the $500+ and $1000+ market segments.^[86]

The civilian UAV market is relatively new compared to the military one. Companies are emerging in both developed and developing nations at the same time. Many early stage startups have received support and funding from investors like in United States and by government agencies as the case in India.^[87] Some universities offer research and training programs or degrees.^[88] Private entities also provide online and in-person training programs for both recreational and commercial UAV use.^[89]

Consumer drones are also widely used by military organizations worldwide because of the cost-effective nature of consumer product. In 2018, Israeli military started to use DJI Mavic and Matrice series of UAV for light reconnaissance mission since the civilian drones are easier to use and have higher reliability. DJI drones is also the most widely used commercial unmanned aerial system that the US Army has employed.^[90][91]

The global UAV market will reach US$21.47 billion, with the Indian market touching the US$885.7 million mark, by 2021.^[92]

Lighted drones are beginning to be used in nighttime displays for artistic and advertising purposes.

The AIA reports large cargo and passengers drones should be certified and introduced over the next 20 years. Sensor-carrying large drones are expected from 2018; short-haul, low altitude freighters outside cities from 2025; long-haul cargo flights by the mid-2030s and then passenger flights by 2040. Spending should rise from a few hundred million dollars on research and development in 2018 to $4 billion by 2028 and $30 billion by 2036.^[93]

As global food production demand grows exponentially, resources are depleted, farmland is reduced, and agricultural labor is increasingly in short supply, there is an urgent need for more convenient and smarter agricultural solutions than traditional methods, and the agricultural drone and robotics industry is expected to make progress.^[94] In the world, agricultural drones have been used in areas such as Africa, which can help build sustainable agriculture.^[95]

Flapping-wing ornithopters, imitating birds or insects, are a research field in microUAVs. Their inherent stealth recommends them for spy missions.

The Nano Hummingbird is commercially available, while sub-1g microUAVs inspired by flies, albeit using a power tether, can “land” on vertical surfaces.^[96]

Other projects include uncrewed “beetles” and other insects.^[97]

Research is exploring miniature optic-flow sensors, called ocellis, mimicking the compound insect eyes formed from multiple facets, which can transmit data to neuromorphic chips able to treat optic flow as well as light intensity discrepancies.

UAV endurance is not constrained by the physiological capabilities of a human pilot.

Because of their small size, low weight, low vibration and high power to weight ratio, Wankel rotary engines are used in many large UAVs. Their engine rotors cannot seize; the engine is not susceptible to shock-cooling during descent and it does not require an enriched fuel mixture for cooling at high power. These attributes reduce fuel usage, increasing range or payload.

Proper drone cooling is essential for long-term drone endurance. Overheating and subsequent engine failure is the most common cause of drone failure.^[98]

Hydrogen fuel cells, using hydrogen power, may be able to extend the endurance of small UAVs, up to several hours.^{[99][100][101]}

Micro air vehicles endurance is so far best achieved with flapping-wing UAVs, followed by planes and multirotors standing last, due to lower Reynolds number.^[51]

Solar-electric UAVs, a concept originally championed by the AstroFlight Sunrise in 1974, have achieved flight times of several weeks.

Solar-powered atmospheric satellites (“atmosats”) designed for operating at altitudes exceeding 20 km (12 miles, or 60,000 feet) for as long as five years could potentially perform duties more economically and with more versatility than low earth orbit satellites. Likely applications include weather monitoring, disaster recovery, earth imaging and communications.

Electric UAVs powered by microwave power transmission or laser power beaming are other potential endurance solutions.^[102]

Another application for a high endurance UAV would be to “stare” at a battlefield for a long interval (ARGUS-IS, Gorgon Stare, Integrated Sensor Is Structure) to record events that could then be played backwards to track battlefield activities.

Reliability[edit]

Reliability improvements target all aspects of UAV systems, using resilience engineering and fault tolerance techniques.

Individual reliability covers robustness of flight controllers, to ensure safety without excessive redundancy to minimize cost and weight.^[112] Besides, dynamic assessment of flight envelope allows damage-resilient UAVs, using non-linear analysis with ad-hoc designed loops or neural networks.^[113] UAV software liability is bending toward the design and certifications of crewed avionics software.^[114]

Swarm resilience involves maintaining operational capabilities and reconfiguring tasks given unit failures.^[115]

Applications[edit]

There are numerous civilian, commercial, military, and aerospace applications for UAVs. These include:

Civil

Disaster relief, archeology, conservation of biodiversity and habitat, law enforcement, crime, and terrorism,

Commercial

Aerial surveillance, filmmaking, journalism, scientific research, surveying, cargo transport, mining , Transmission and Distribution , Forestry and agriculture

Military

Reconnaissance, attack, demining, and target practice

Existing UAVs[edit]

UAVs are being developed and deployed by many countries around the world. Due to their wide proliferation, no comprehensive list of UAV systems exists.^[44][116]

The export of UAVs or technology capable of carrying a 500 kg payload at least 300 km is restricted in many countries by the Missile Technology Control Regime.

Events[edit]

Safety and security[edit]

Air traffic[edit]

UAVs can threaten airspace security in numerous ways, including unintentional collisions or other interference with other aircraft, deliberate attacks or by distracting pilots or flight controllers. The first incident of a drone-airplane collision occurred in mid-October 2017 in Quebec City, Canada.^[117] The first recorded instance of a drone collision with a hot air balloon occurred on 10 August 2018 in Driggs, Idaho, United States; although there was no significant damage to the balloon nor any injuries to its 3 occupants, the balloon pilot reported the incident to the NTSB, stating that “I hope this incident helps create a conversation of respect for nature, the airspace, and rules and regulations”.^[118] In recent events UAVs flying into or near airports shutting them down for long periods of time.^[119]

Malicious use[edit]

UAVs could be loaded with dangerous payloads, and crashed into vulnerable targets. Payloads could include explosives, chemical, radiologial or biological hazards. UAVs with generally non-lethal payloads could possibly be hacked and put to malicious purposes. Anti-UAV systems are being developed by states to counter this threat. This is, however, proving difficult. As Dr J. Rogers stated in an interview to A&T “There is a big debate out there at the moment about what the best way is to counter these small UAVs, whether they are used by hobbyists causing a bit of a nuisance or in a more sinister manner by a terrorist actor”.^[120]

By 2017, drones were being used to drop contraband into prisons.^[121] Drones caused significant disruption at Gatwick Airport during December 2018, needing the deployment of the British Army.^[122] [123]

Counter unmanned air system[edit]

The malicious use of UAVs has led to the development of counter unmanned air system (C-UAS) technologies such as the Rafael Drone Dome and the Raytheon Coyote. Anti-aircraft missile systems, such as the Iron Dome are also being enhanced with C-UAS technologies.

Security vulnerabilities[edit]

The interest in UAVs cyber security has been raised greatly after the Predator UAV video stream hijacking incident in 2009,^[124] where Islamic militants used cheap, off-the-shelf equipment to stream video feeds from a UAV. Another risk is the possibility of hijacking or jamming a UAV in flight. Several security researchers have made public some vulnerabilities in commercial UAVs, in some cases even providing full source code or tools to reproduce their attacks.^[125] At a workshop on UAVs and privacy in October 2016, researchers from the Federal Trade Commission showed they were able to hack into three different consumer quadcopters and noted that UAV manufacturers can make their UAVs more secure by the basic security measures of encrypting the Wi-Fi signal and adding password protection.^[126]

Wildfires[edit]

In the United States, flying close to a wildfire is punishable by a maximum $25,000 fine. Nonetheless, in 2014 and 2015, firefighting air support in California was hindered on several occasions, including at the Lake Fire^[127] and the North Fire.^[128][129] In response, California legislators introduced a bill that would allow firefighters to disable UAVs which invaded restricted airspace.^[130] The FAA later required registration of most UAVs.

The use of UAVs is also being investigated to help detect and fight wildfires, whether through observation or launching pyrotechnic devices to start backfires.^[131]

Regulation[edit]

Ethical concerns and UAV-related accidents have driven nations to regulate the use of UAVs.

Brazil[edit]

In 2017^[132], the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) regulated the operation of drones through the Brazilian Special Civil Aviation Regulation No. 94/2017 (RBAC-E No. 94/2017). ANAC’s regulation complements the drone operating rules established by the Airspace Control Department (DECEA) and the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL).

Canada[edit]

In 2016, Transport Canada proposed the implementation of new regulations that would require all UAVs over 250 grams to be registered and insured and that operators would be required to be a minimum age and pass an exam in order to get a license.^[133] Revised regulations are in effect as of June 2019.^[134]

Ireland[edit]

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) requires all UAVs over 1 kg to be registered with UAVs weighing 4 kg or more requiring a license to be issued by the IAA.^[135][136]

Italy[edit]

The ENAC (Ente Nazionale per l’Aviazione Civile), that is, the Italian Civil Aviation Authority for technical regulation, certification, supervision and control in the field of civil aviation, issued on 31 May 2016 a very detailed regulation for all UAV, determining which types of vehicles can be used, where, for which purposes, and who can control them. The regulation deals with the usage of UAV for either commercial and recreational use. The last version was published on 22 December 2016.^[137]

Japan[edit]

In 2015, Civil Aviation Bureau in Japan announced that “UA/Drone” (refers to any airplane, rotorcraft, glider or airship which cannot accommodate any person on board and can be remotely or automatically piloted) should (A) not fly near or above airports, (B) not fly over 150 meter above ground/water surface, (C) not fly over urban area and suburb (so only rural area is allowed.) UA/drone should be operated manually and at Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) and so on. UA/drone should not fly near any important buildings or facilities of the country including nuclear facilities. UA/drone must follow the Japan Radio Act exactly.^[138]

Netherlands[edit]

As of May 2016, the Dutch police are testing trained bald eagles to intercept offending UAVs.^[139][140]

South Africa[edit]

In April 2014, the South African Civil Aviation Authority announced that it would clamp down on the illegal flying of UAVs in South African airspace.^[141] “Hobby drones” with a weight of less than 7 kg at altitudes up to 500m with restricted visual line-of-sight below the height of the highest obstacle within 300m of the UAV are allowed. No license is required for such vehicles.^[142]

United Arab Emirates[edit]

In order to fly a drone in Dubai, citizens have to obtain a no objection certificate from Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA). This certificate can be obtained online.^[143]

United Kingdom[edit]

As of December 2018, UAVs of 20 kilograms (44 lb) or less must fly within the operator’s eyesight. In built up areas, UAVs must be 150 feet (46 m) away from people and cannot be flown over large crowds or built up areas.^[144]

In July 2018, it became illegal to fly a UAV over 400 feet (120 m) and to fly within 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) of aircraft, airports and airfields.

United States[edit]

Recreational use[edit]

From 21 December 2015, all hobby type UAVs between 250 grams and 25 kilograms needed to be registered with FAA no later than 19 February 2016.^[145]

The new FAA UAV registration process includes requirements for:

• Eligible owners must register their UAVs prior to flight. Non-commercial flights are no longer subject to registration.^[146]
• If the owner is less than 13 years old, a parent or other responsible person must do the FAA registration.
• UAVs must be marked with the FAA-issued registration number.^[147]
• The registration fee is $5. The registration is good for 3 years and can be renewed for an additional 3 years at the $5 rate.^[148]
• A single registration applies to all UAVs owned by an individual. Failure to register can result in civil penalties of up to $27,500 and criminal penalties of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years.^[149]

On 19 May 2017, in the case Taylor v. Huerta,^[150] the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit^[151] held that the FAA’s 2015 drone registration rules were in violation of the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act. Under the court’s holding, although commercial drone operators are required to register, recreational operators are not.^[152] On 25 May 2017, one week after the Taylor decision, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced S. 1272, the Drone Federalism Act of 2017,^[153] in Congress.

Commercial use[edit]

On 21 June 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration announced regulations for commercial operation of small UAS craft (sUAS), those between 0.55 and 55 pounds (about 250 gm to 25 kg) including payload. The rules, which exclude hobbyists, require the presence at all operations of a licensed Remote Pilot in Command. Certification of this position, available to any citizen at least 16 years of age, is obtained solely by passing a written test and then submitting an application. For those holding a sport pilot license or higher, and with a current flight review, a rule-specific exam can be taken at no charge online at the faasafety.gov website. Other applicants must take a more comprehensive examination at an aeronautical testing center. All licensees are required to take a review course every two years. At this time no ratings for heavier UAS are available.^[154]

Commercial operation is restricted to daylight, line-of-sight, under 100 mph, under 400 feet, and Class G airspace only, and may not fly over people or be operated from a moving vehicle.^[155] Some organizations have obtained a waiver or Certificate of Authorization that allows them to exceed these rules.^[156] On 20 September 2018, State Farm Insurance, in partnership with the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and FAA Integration Pilot Program, became the first in the United States to fly a UAV ‘Beyond-Visual-Line-Of-Sight’ (BVLOS) and over people under an FAA Part 107 Waiver. The flight was made at the Virginia Tech Kentland Farms outside the Blacksburg campus with an SenseFly eBee vehicle, Pilot-In-Command was Christian Kang, a State Farm Weather Catastrophe Claims Services employee (Part 107 & 61 pilot).^[157] Additionally, CNN’s waiver for UAVs modified for injury prevention to fly over people, while other waivers allow night flying with special lighting, or non-line-of-sight operations for agriculture or railroad track inspection.^[158]

Previous to this announcement, any commercial use required a full pilot’s license and an FAA waiver, of which hundreds had been granted.

Government use[edit]

The use of UAVs for law-enforcement purposes is regulated at a state level.^{[citation needed]}

In Oregon, law enforcement is allowed to operate non-weaponized drones without a warrant if there is enough reason to believe that the current environment poses imminent danger to which the drone can acquire information or assist individuals. Otherwise, a warrant, with a maximum period of 30 days of interaction, must be acquired.^[159]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Wagner, William (1982), Lightning Bugs and other Reconnaissance Drones; The can-do story of Ryan’s unmanned spy planes, Armed Forces Journal International : Aero Publishers, ISBN 978-0-8168-6654-0

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Unmanned aerial vehicles.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Drones

Further reading[edit]

• Garcia-Bernardo, Sheridan Dodds, F. Johnson (2016). “Quantitative patterns in drone wars” (PDF). Science direct. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 February 2016.
• Hill, J., & Rogers, A. (2014). The rise of the drones: From The Great War to Gaza. Vancouver Island University Arts & Humanities Colloquium Series.
• Rogers, A., & Hill, J. (2014). Unmanned: Drone warfare and global security. Between the Lines. ISBN 9781771131544
• How Intelligent Drones Are Shaping the Future of Warfare, Rolling Stone Magazine

New Orleans, Louisiana   La Nouvelle-Orléans (French)
Consolidated city-parish
City of New Orleans
From top, left to right: Central Business District, a streetcar in New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, Bourbon Street, Mercedes-Benz Superdome, University of New Orleans, Crescent City Connection
Flag Seal
Nickname(s): The Crescent City; The Big Easy; The City That Care Forgot; NOLA
Location within Louisiana
New Orleans Location in the United States of America Show map of LouisianaShow map of the United StatesShow all
Coordinates: 29.95°N 90.08°WCoordinates: 29.95°N 90.08°W
Country	United States
State	Louisiana
Parish	Orleans
Founded	1718
Named for	Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674–1723)
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Mayor	LaToya Cantrell (D)
• Council	New Orleans City Council
Area [1]
• Consolidated city-parish	349.85 sq mi (906.10 km2)
• Land	169.42 sq mi (438.80 km2)
• Water	180.43 sq mi (467.30 km2)
• Metro	3,755.2 sq mi (9,726.6 km2)
Elevation	−6.5 to 20 ft (−2 to 6 m)
Population  (2010)[2]
• Consolidated city-parish	343,829
• Estimate (2018)	391,006
• Density	2,029/sq mi (783/km2)
• Metro	1,262,888 (US: 46th)
Demonym(s)	New Orleanian
Time zone	UTC−6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−5 (CDT)
Area code(s)	504
FIPS code	22-55000
Website	nola.gov

New Orleans (/ˈɔːrl(i)ənz, ɔːrˈliːnz/,^[3][4] locally /ˈɔːrlənz/; French: La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛlɔʁleɑ̃] (listen)) is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 391,006 in 2018,^[5] it is the most populous city in Louisiana. Serving as a major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.

New Orleans is world-renowned for its distinct music, Creole cuisine, unique dialect, and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the “most unique”^[6] in the United States,^{[7][8][9][10][11]} owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage.^[12] Founded in 1718 by French colonists, New Orleans was once the territorial capital of French Louisiana before being traded to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. New Orleans in 1840 was the third-most populous city in the United States,^[13] and it was the largest city in the American South from the Antebellum era until after World War II. The city’s location and flat elevation have historically made it very vulnerable to flooding. State and federal authorities have installed a complex system of levees and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city.^[14]

New Orleans was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, which resulted in flooding more than 80% of the city, thousands of deaths, and so much displacement because of damaged communities and lost housing as to cause a population decline of over 50%.^[15] Since Katrina, major redevelopment efforts have led to a rebound in the city’s population. Concerns about gentrification, new residents buying property in formerly closely knit communities, and displacement of longtime residents have been expressed.^[16]

The city and Orleans Parish (French: paroisse d’Orléans) are coterminous.^[17] As of 2017, Orleans Parish is the third most-populous parish in Louisiana, behind East Baton Rouge Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish.^[18] The city and parish are bounded by St. Tammany Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, St. Bernard Parish and Lake Borgne to the east, Plaquemines Parish to the south, and Jefferson Parish to the south and west.

The city anchors the larger New Orleans metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1,275,762 in 2017. It is the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the 46th-most populous MSA in the United States.^[19]

Names

The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723. It has many illustrative nicknames:

• Crescent City alludes to the course of the Lower Mississippi River around and through the city.^[20]
• The Big Easy was possibly^{[clarification needed]} a reference by musicians in the early 20th century to the relative ease of finding work there.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} It may have originated in the Prohibition era, when the city was considered one big speakeasy due to the government’s inability to control alcohol sales, in open violation of the 18th Amendment.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]}
• The City that Care Forgot has been used since at least 1938,^[21] and refers to the outwardly easy-going, carefree nature of the residents.

History

Beginnings

La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded in the spring of 1718 (May 7 has become the traditional date to mark the anniversary, but the actual day is unknown^[22]) by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans.

The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763), following France’s defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years’ War. During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, and transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Beginning in the 1760s, Filipinos began to settle in and around New Orleans.^[23] Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779.^[24] Nueva Orleans (the name of New Orleans in Spanish) remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French rule. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent.^[25]

Native Americans and French Louisiana

As a French colony, Louisiana faced struggles with numerous Native American nations. One of which was the Natchez in Southern Mississippi. In the 1720s trouble developed between the French and the Natchez Indians that would be called the Natchez War or Natchez Revolt. 230 colonists were killed and the fort and homes were burned to the ground.

The conflict between the two parties was a direct result of Lieutenant d’Etcheparre (more commonly known as Sieur de Chépart), the commandant at the settlement near the Natchez, decided in 1729 that the Natchez Indians should surrender both their cultivated crop lands and their town of White Apple to the French. The Natchez pretended to surrender and actually worked for the French in the hunting game, but as soon as they were weaponized, they struck back and killed several men. Resulting in the colonist fleeing upriver to New Orleans. The fleeing colonist sought protection from what they feared might be a colony-wide Indian uprising. The Natchez, however, did not to press on after their surprise attack, leaving them vulnerable enough for King Louis XV’s appointed governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville to reclaim the settlement.

Relations with Louisiana’s Indians, a problem inherited from Bienville, remained a concern for the next governor, Marquis de Vaudreuil. In the early 1740s traders from the British colonies of the Atlantic coast crossed into the Appalachian Mountains. The Native nations in between the French colonials and British colonials would now operate dependent on which of the two colonies would most benefit them. Several of these tribes and especially the Chicksaw and Choctaw would trade goods and gifts for their loyalty.^[26]

The economic problems under Vaudreuil would not allow the French to outcompete the British and resulted in many of Louisiana’s Native American revolts. In 1747 and 1748 the Chicksaw would raid along the east bank of the Mississippi all the way south to Baton Rouge. These actions supported by the British colonials would force residents of French Louisiana to take refuge in New Orleans.

Slavery in French Louisiana

Inability to find labor was the most pressing issue in the early French colony. Colonist turned to African slavery to make their investments in Louisiana profitable. In the late 1710s the international slave trade imported enslaved Africans. Leading to the biggest shipment in 1716 where several trading ships appeared with slaves as cargo to local residents in a one-year span.

By 1724, the large number of blacks in Louisiana prompted the institutionalizing of laws governing slavery within the colony. These laws included slaves needed to be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, slaves must be married in the Church, and slaves had no legal rights. The slave law formed in the 1720s is known as the Code Noir, which would bleed into the antebellum period of the American South as well. Louisiana slave culture had its own distinct Afro-Creole society that called on past cultures and the situation for slaves in the New World. Afro-Creole was present in religious beliefs and the Louisiana Creole dialect. The religion most associated with this period for slaves started in New Orleans called Voodoo.

Religion and architecture from across the world

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In the city of New Orleans an inspiring mixture of foreign influences created a melting pot of culture that is still celebrated today. By the end of French colonization in Louisiana, New Orleans was recognized commercially in the Atlantic world. Its inhabitants traded across the French commercial system. New Orleans was this hub for trade both physically and culturally because it served as the exit point to the rest of the globe for the interior of the North American continent.

In one instance the French government established a chapter house of sisters in New Orleans. The Ursuline sisters after being sponsored by the Company of the Indies, founded a covenant in the city in 1727. At the end of the colonial era, the Ursuline Academy maintained a house of seventy boarding and one hundred day students. Today numerous schools in New Orleans can trace their lineage from this academy.

Another is the architecture still distinguishing New Orleans. French Louisiana had early architects in the province who were trained as military engineers and were now assigned to design government buildings. Pierre Le Blond de Tour and Adrien de Pauger, for example, planned many early fortifications, along with the street plan for the city of New Orleans. After them in the 1740s, Ignace François Broutin, as engineer-in-chief of Louisiana, reworked the architecture of New Orleans with an extensive public works program.

French policy-makers in Paris attempted to set political and economic norms for the New Orleans, it acted autonomously in much of its cultural and physical aspects, but also stayed centralized to the foreign trends as well.

Post-Treaty of Paris

After the French relinquished West Louisiana to the Spanish, New Orleans merchants attempted to ignore Spanish rule and even re-institute French control on the colony. The citizens of New Orleans held a series of public meetings during 1765 to keep the populace in opposition of the establishment of Spanish rule. Anti-Spanish passions in New Orleans, reached its highest level after two years of Spanish administration in Louisiana. On October 27, 1768, a mob of local residents, spiked the guns guarding New Orleans and took control of the city from the Spanish. The rebellion organized a group to sail for Paris, where it met with officials of the French government. This group brought with them a long memorial to summarize the abuses the colony had endured from the Spanish. King Louis XV and his ministers reaffirmed Spain’s sovereignty over Louisiana.

United States territory

Napoleon sold Louisiana (New France) to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, Poles and Italians. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on nearby large plantations.

Thousands of refugees from the 1804 Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color (affranchis or gens de couleur libres), arrived in New Orleans; a number brought their slaves with them, many of whom were native Africans or of full-blood descent. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. As more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans, Haitian émigrés who had first gone to Cuba also arrived.^[27] Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in retaliation for Bonapartist schemes.^[28]

Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color (of mixed-race European and African descent), and 3,226 slaves of primarily African descent, doubling the city’s population. The city became 63 percent black, a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina‘s 53 percent.^[27]

Battle of New Orleans

During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, including free men of color, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky riflemen, Choctaw fighters, and local privateers (the latter led by the pirate Jean Lafitte), to decisively defeat the British troops, led by Sir Edward Pakenham, in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815.

The armies had not learned of the Treaty of Ghent, which had been signed on December 24, 1814 (however, the treaty did not call for cessation of hostilities until after both governments had ratified it. The U.S. government ratified it on February 16, 1815).^[30] The fighting in Louisiana had begun in December 1814 and did not end until late January, after the Americans held off the British Navy during a ten-day siege of Fort St. Philip (the Royal Navy went on to capture Fort Bowyer near Mobile, before the commanders received news of the peace treaty).

Port

As a port, New Orleans played a major role during the antebellum era in the Atlantic slave trade. The port handled commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed along the Mississippi River watershed. The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships. Despite its role in the slave trade, New Orleans at the time also had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners.^[31][32]

Slavery and immigration

Dwarfing the other cities in the antebellum South, New Orleans had the nation’s largest slave market. The market expanded after the U.S. ended the international trade in 1808. Two-thirds of the more than one million slaves brought to the Deep South arrived via forced migration in the domestic slave trade. The money generated by the sale of slaves in the Upper South has been estimated at 15 percent of the value of the staple crop economy. The slaves were collectively valued at half a billion dollars. The trade spawned an ancillary economy—transportation, housing and clothing, fees, etc., estimated at 13.5% of the price per person, amounting to tens of billions of dollars (2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) during the antebellum period, with New Orleans as a prime beneficiary.^[33]

According to historian Paul Lachance,

the addition of white immigrants [from Saint-Domingue] to the white creole population enabled French-speakers to remain a majority of the white population until almost 1830. If a substantial proportion of free persons of color and slaves had not also spoken French, however, the Gallic community would have become a minority of the total population as early as 1820.^[34]

After the Louisiana Purchase, numerous Anglo-Americans migrated to the city. The population doubled in the 1830s and by 1840, New Orleans had become the nation’s wealthiest and the third-most populous city, after New York and Baltimore.^[35] German and Irish immigrants began arriving in the 1840s, working as port laborers. In this period, the state legislature passed more restrictions on manumissions of slaves and virtually ended it in 1852.^[36]

In the 1850s, white Francophones remained an intact and vibrant community in New Orleans. They maintained instruction in French in two of the city’s four school districts (all served white students).^[37] In 1860, the city had 13,000 free people of color (gens de couleur libres), the class of free, mostly mixed-race people that expanded in number during French and Spanish rule. They set up some private schools for their children. The census recorded 81 percent of the free people of color as mulatto, a term used to cover all degrees of mixed race.^[36] Mostly part of the Francophone group, they constituted the artisan, educated and professional class of African Americans. The mass of blacks were still enslaved, working at the port, in domestic service, in crafts, and mostly on the many large, surrounding sugarcane plantations.

After growing by 45 percent in the 1850s, by 1860, the city had nearly 170,000 people.^[38] It had grown in wealth, with a “per capita income [that] was second in the nation and the highest in the South.”^[38] The city had a role as the “primary commercial gateway for the nation’s booming midsection.”^[38] The port was the nation’s third largest in terms of tonnage of imported goods, after Boston and New York, handling 659,000 tons in 1859.^[38]

Civil War

As the Creole elite feared, the Civil War changed their world. In 1862, following the occupation by the Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, led by Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a respected state lawyer of the Massachusetts militia, Northern forces occupied the city. Later New Orleans residents nicknamed him “Beast” Butler, because of a military order he issued. After his troops had been assaulted and harassed in the streets by Southern women, his order warned that such future occurrences would result in his men treating such “ladies” as those “plying their avocation in the streets”, implying that they would treat the women like prostitutes. Accounts of this spread widely. He also came to be called “Spoons” Butler because of the alleged looting that his troops did while occupying the city.^{[citation needed]}

Butler abolished French language instruction in city schools. Statewide measures in 1864 and, after the war, 1868 further strengthened the English-only policy imposed by federal representatives. With the predominance of English speakers, that language had already become dominant in business and government.^[37] By the end of the 19th century, French usage had faded. It was also under pressure from Irish, Italian and German immigrants.^[39] However, as late as 1902 “one-fourth of the population of the city spoke French in ordinary daily intercourse, while another two-fourths was able to understand the language perfectly,”^[40] and as late as 1945, many elderly Creole women spoke no English.^[41] The last major French language newspaper, L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans Bee), ceased publication on December 27, 1923, after ninety-six years.^[42] According to some sources, Le Courrier de la Nouvelle Orleans continued until 1955.^[43]

As the city was captured and occupied early in the war, it was spared the destruction through warfare suffered by many other cities of the American South. The Union Army eventually extended its control north along the Mississippi River and along the coastal areas. As a result, most of the southern portion of Louisiana was originally exempted from the liberating provisions of the 1863 “Emancipation Proclamation” issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Large numbers of rural ex-slaves and some free people of color from the city volunteered for the first regiments of Black troops in the War. Led by Brigadier General Daniel Ullman (1810–1892), of the 78th Regiment of New York State Volunteers Militia, they were known as the “Corps d’Afrique.” While that name had been used by a militia before the war, that group was composed of free people of color. The new group was made up mostly of former slaves. They were supplemented in the last two years of the War by newly organized United States Colored Troops, who played an increasingly important part in the war.^[44]

Reconstruction

Violence throughout the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 followed by the New Orleans Riot in the same year, led Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, extending the protections of full citizenship to freedmen and free people of color. Louisiana and Texas were put under the authority of the “Fifth Military District” of the United States during Reconstruction. Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Its Constitution of 1868 granted universal male suffrage and established universal public education. Both blacks and whites were elected to local and state offices. In 1872, lieutenant governor P.B.S. Pinchback, who was of mixed race, succeeded Henry Clay Warmouth for a brief period as Republican governor of Louisiana, becoming the first governor of African descent of an American state (the next African American to serve as governor of an American state was Douglas Wilder, elected in Virginia in 1989). New Orleans operated a racially integrated public school system during this period.

Wartime damage to levees and cities along the Mississippi River adversely affected southern crops and trade. The federal government contributed to restoring infrastructure. The nationwide financial recession and Panic of 1873 adversely affected businesses and slowed economic recovery.

From 1868, elections in Louisiana were marked by violence, as white insurgents tried to suppress black voting and disrupt Republican Party gatherings. The disputed 1872 gubernatorial election resulted in conflicts that ran for years. The “White League“, an insurgent paramilitary group that supported the Democratic Party, was organized in 1874 and operated in the open, violently suppressing the black vote and running off Republican officeholders. In 1874, in the Battle of Liberty Place, 5,000 members of the White League fought with city police to take over the state offices for the Democratic candidate for governor, holding them for three days. By 1876, such tactics resulted in the white Democrats, the so-called Redeemers, regaining political control of the state legislature. The federal government gave up and withdrew its troops in 1877, ending Reconstruction.

Jim Crow era

White Democrats passed Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in public facilities. In 1889, the legislature passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a “grandfather clause” that effectively disfranchised freedmen as well as the propertied people of color manumitted before the war. Unable to vote, African Americans could not serve on juries or in local office, and were closed out of formal politics for generations. The South was ruled by a white Democratic Party. Public schools were racially segregated and remained so until 1960.

New Orleans’ large community of well-educated, often French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres), who had been free prior to the Civil War, fought against Jim Crow. They organized the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) to work for civil rights. As part of their legal campaign, they recruited one of their own, Homer Plessy, to test whether Louisiana’s newly enacted Separate Car Act was constitutional. Plessy boarded a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana, sat in the car reserved for whites only, and was arrested. The case resulting from this incident, Plessy v. Ferguson, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court ruled that “separate but equal” accommodations were constitutional, effectively upholding Jim Crow measures. In practice, African-American public schools and facilities were underfunded across the South. The Supreme Court ruling contributed to this period as the nadir of race relations in the United States. The rate of lynchings of black men was high across the South, as other states also disfranchised blacks and sought to impose Jim Crow. Nativist prejudices also surfaced. Anti-Italian sentiment in 1891 contributed to the lynchings of 11 Italians, some of whom had been acquitted of the murder of the police chief. Some were shot and killed in the jail where they were detained. It was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.^[45][46] In July 1900 the city was swept by white mobs rioting after Robert Charles, a young African American, killed a policeman and temporarily escaped. The mob killed him and an estimated 20 other blacks; seven whites died in the days-long conflict, until a state militia suppressed it.

Throughout New Orleans’ history, until the early 20th Century when medical and scientific advances ameliorated the situation, the city suffered repeated epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical and infectious diseases.

20th century

New Orleans’ economic and population zenith in relation to other American cities occurred in the antebellum period. It was the nation’s fifth-largest city in 1860 (after New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore) and was significantly larger than all other southern cities.^[47] From the mid-19th century onward rapid economic growth shifted to other areas, while New Orleans’ relative importance steadily declined. The growth of railways and highways decreased river traffic, diverting goods to other transportation corridors and markets.^[47] Thousands of the most ambitious people of color left the state in the Great Migration around World War II and after, many for West Coast destinations. From the late 1800s, most censuses recorded New Orleans slipping down the ranks in the list of largest American cities (New Orleans’ population still continued to increase throughout the period, but at a slower rate than before the Civil War).

By the mid-20th Century, New Orleanians recognized that their city was no longer the leading urban area in the South. By 1950, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta exceeded New Orleans in size, and in 1960 Miami eclipsed New Orleans, even as the latter’s population reached its historic peak.^[47] As with other older American cities, highway construction and suburban development drew residents from the center city to newer housing outside. The 1970 census recorded the first absolute decline in population since the city became part of the United States in 1803. The New Orleans metropolitan area continued expanding in population, albeit more slowly than other major Sun Belt cities. While the port remained one of the nation’s largest, automation and containerization cost many jobs. The city’s former role as banker to the South was supplanted by larger peer cities. New Orleans’ economy had always been based more on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city’s relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank after World War II. Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of DeLesseps “Chep” Morrison (1946–1961) and Victor “Vic” Schiro (1961–1970), metropolitan New Orleans’ growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities.

Civil Rights Movement

During the later years of Morrison’s administration, and for the entirety of Schiro’s, the city was a center of the Civil Rights Movement. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in New Orleans, and lunch counter sit-ins were held in Canal Street department stores. A prominent and violent series of confrontations occurred in 1960 when the city attempted school desegregation, following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). When six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward, she was the first child of color to attend a previously all-white school in the South.

The Civil Rights Movement’s success in gaining federal passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 renewed constitutional rights, including voting for blacks. Together, these resulted in the most far-reaching changes in New Orleans’ 20th century history.^[48] Though legal and civil equality were re-established by the end of the 1960s, a large gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city’s White and African-American communities.^[49] As the middle class and wealthier members of both races left the center city, its population’s income level dropped, and it became proportionately more African American. From 1980, the African-American majority elected primarily officials from its own community. They struggled to narrow the gap by creating conditions conducive to the economic uplift of the African-American community.

New Orleans became increasingly dependent on tourism as an economic mainstay during the administrations of Sidney Barthelemy (1986–1994) and Marc Morial (1994–2002). Relatively low levels of educational attainment, high rates of household poverty, and rising crime threatened the city’s prosperity in the later decades of the century.^[49] The negative effects of these socioeconomic conditions aligned poorly with the changes in the late-20th century to the economy of the United States, which reflected a post-industrial, knowledge-based paradigm in which mental skills and education were more important to advancement than manual skills.

Drainage and flood control

In the 20th century, New Orleans’ government and business leaders believed they needed to drain and develop outlying areas to provide for the city’s expansion. The most ambitious development during this period was a drainage plan devised by engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood, designed to break the surrounding swamp’s stranglehold on the city’s geographic expansion. Until then, urban development in New Orleans was largely limited to higher ground along the natural river levees and bayous.

Wood’s pump system allowed the city to drain huge tracts of swamp and marshland and expand into low-lying areas. Over the 20th century, rapid subsidence, both natural and human-induced, resulted in these newly populated areas subsiding to several feet below sea level.^[50][51]

New Orleans was vulnerable to flooding even before the city’s footprint departed from the natural high ground near the Mississippi River. In the late 20th century, however, scientists and New Orleans residents gradually became aware of the city’s increased vulnerability. In 1965, flooding from Hurricane Betsy killed dozens of residents, although the majority of the city remained dry. The rain-induced flood of May 8, 1995, demonstrated the weakness of the pumping system. After that event, measures were undertaken to dramatically upgrade pumping capacity. By the 1980s and 1990s, scientists observed that extensive, rapid, and ongoing erosion of the marshlands and swamp surrounding New Orleans, especially that related to the Mississippi River – Gulf Outlet Canal, had the unintended result of leaving the city more vulnerable than before to hurricane-induced catastrophic storm surges.

21st century

Hurricane Katrina

New Orleans was catastrophically affected by what Raymond B. Seed called “the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl“, when the Federal levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.^[52] By the time the hurricane approached the city on August 29, 2005, most residents had evacuated. As the hurricane passed through the Gulf Coast region, the city’s federal flood protection system failed, resulting in the worst civil engineering disaster in American history.^[53] Floodwalls and levees constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers failed below design specifications and 80% of the city flooded. Tens of thousands of residents who had remained were rescued or otherwise made their way to shelters of last resort at the Louisiana Superdome or the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. More than 1,500 people were recorded as having died in Louisiana, most in New Orleans, while others remain unaccounted for.^[54][55] Before Hurricane Katrina, the city called for the first mandatory evacuation in its history, to be followed by another mandatory evacuation three years later with Hurricane Gustav.

Hurricane Rita

The city was declared off-limits to residents while efforts to clean up after Hurricane Katrina began. The approach of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 caused repopulation efforts to be postponed,^[56] and the Lower Ninth Ward was reflooded by Rita’s storm surge.^[55]

Post-disaster recovery

Because of the scale of damage, many people resettled permanently outside the area. Federal, state, and local efforts supported recovery and rebuilding in severely damaged neighborhoods. The Census Bureau in July 2006 estimated the population to be 223,000; a subsequent study estimated that 32,000 additional residents had moved to the city as of March 2007, bringing the estimated population to 255,000, approximately 56% of the pre-Katrina population level. Another estimate, based on utility usage from July 2007, estimated the population to be approximately 274,000 or 60% of the pre-Katrina population. These estimates are somewhat smaller to a third estimate, based on mail delivery records, from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center in June 2007, which indicated that the city had regained approximately two-thirds of its pre-Katrina population.^[57] In 2008, the Census Bureau revised its population estimate for the city upward, to 336,644.^[58] Most recently, by July 2015, the population was back up to 386,617—80% of what it was in 2000.^[59]

Several major tourist events and other forms of revenue for the city have returned. Large conventions returned.^[60][61] College bowl games returned for the 2006–2007 season. The New Orleans Saints returned that season. The New Orleans Hornets (now named the Pelicans) returned to the city for the 2007–2008 season. New Orleans hosted the 2008 NBA All-Star Game. Additionally, the city hosted Super Bowl XLVII.

Major annual events such as Mardi Gras, Voodoo Experience, and the Jazz & Heritage Festival were never displaced or canceled. A new annual festival, “The Running of the Bulls New Orleans”, was created in 2007.^[62]

On February 7, 2017, a large EF3 wedge tornado hit parts of the eastern side of the city, damaging homes and other buildings, as well as destroying a mobile home park. At least 25 people were left injured by the event.^[63]

Geography

New Orleans is located in the Mississippi River Delta, south of Lake Pontchartrain, on the banks of the Mississippi River, approximately 105 miles (169 km) upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city’s area is 350 square miles (910 km²), of which 169 square miles (440 km²) is land and 181 square miles (470 km²) (52%) is water.^[64] Orleans Parish is the smallest parish by land area in Louisiana. The area along the river is characterized by ridges and hollows.

Elevation

New Orleans was originally settled on the river’s natural levees or high ground. After the Flood Control Act of 1965, the US Army Corps of Engineers built floodwalls and man-made levees around a much larger geographic footprint that included previous marshland and swamp. Over time, pumping of water from marshland allowed for development into lower elevation areas. Today, half of the city is at or below local mean sea level, while the other half is slightly above sea level. Evidence suggests that portions of the city may be dropping in elevation due to subsidence.^[65]

A 2007 study by Tulane and Xavier University suggested that “51%… of the contiguous urbanized portions of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard parishes lie at or above sea level,” with the more densely populated areas generally on higher ground. The average elevation of the city is currently between 1 foot (0.30 m) and 2 feet (0.61 m) below sea level, with some portions of the city as high as 20 feet (6 m) at the base of the river levee in Uptown and others as low as 7 feet (2 m) below sea level in the farthest reaches of Eastern New Orleans.^[66][67] A study published by the ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering in 2016, however, stated:

…most of New Orleans proper – about 65% – is at or below mean sea level, as defined by the average elevation of Lake Pontchartrain^[68]

The magnitude of subsidence potentially caused by the draining of natural marsh in the New Orleans area and southeast Louisiana is a topic of debate. A study published in Geology in 2006 by an associate professor at Tulane University claims:

While erosion and wetland loss are huge problems along Louisiana’s coast, the basement 30 feet (9.1 m) to 50 feet (15 m) beneath much of the Mississippi Delta has been highly stable for the past 8,000 years with negligible subsidence rates.^[69]

The study noted, however, that the results did not necessarily apply to the Mississippi River Delta, nor the New Orleans Metropolitan area proper. On the other hand, a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers claims that “New Orleans is subsiding (sinking)”:^[70]

Large portions of Orleans, St. Bernard, and Jefferson parishes are currently below sea level—and continue to sink. New Orleans is built on thousands of feet of soft sand, silt, and clay. Subsidence, or settling of the ground surface, occurs naturally due to the consolidation and oxidation of organic soils (called “marsh” in New Orleans) and local groundwater pumping. In the past, flooding and deposition of sediments from the Mississippi River counterbalanced the natural subsidence, leaving southeast Louisiana at or above sea level. However, due to major flood control structures being built upstream on the Mississippi River and levees being built around New Orleans, fresh layers of sediment are not replenishing the ground lost by subsidence.^[70]

In May 2016, NASA published a study^[71] which suggested that most areas were, in fact, experiencing subsidence at a “highly variable rate” which was “generally consistent with, but somewhat higher than, previous studies.”

Cityscape

The Central Business District is located immediately north and west of the Mississippi and was historically called the “American Quarter” or “American Sector.” It was developed after the heart of French and Spanish settlement. It includes Lafayette Square. Most streets in this area fan out from a central point. Major streets include Canal Street, Poydras Street, Tulane Avenue and Loyola Avenue. Canal Street divides the traditional “downtown” area from the “uptown” area.

Every street crossing Canal Street between the Mississippi River and Rampart Street, which is the northern edge of the French Quarter, has a different name for the “uptown” and “downtown” portions. For example, St. Charles Avenue, known for its street car line, is called Royal Street below Canal Street, though where it traverses the Central Business District between Canal and Lee Circle, it is properly called St. Charles Street.^[72] Elsewhere in the city, Canal Street serves as the dividing point between the “South” and “North” portions of various streets. In the local parlance downtown means “downriver from Canal Street”, while uptown means “upriver from Canal Street”. Downtown neighborhoods include the French Quarter, Tremé, the 7th Ward, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater (the Upper Ninth Ward), and the Lower Ninth Ward. Uptown neighborhoods include the Warehouse District, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, the University District, Carrollton, Gert Town, Fontainebleau and Broadmoor. However, the Warehouse and the Central Business District are frequently called “Downtown” as a specific region, as in the Downtown Development District.

Other major districts within the city include Bayou St. John, Mid-City, Gentilly, Lakeview, Lakefront, New Orleans East and Algiers.

Historic and residential architecture

New Orleans is world-famous for its abundance of architectural styles that reflect the city’s multicultural heritage. Though New Orleans possesses numerous structures of national architectural significance, it is equally, if not more, revered for its enormous, largely intact (even post-Katrina) historic built environment. Twenty National Register Historic Districts have been established, and fourteen local historic districts aid in preservation. Thirteen of the districts are administered by the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission (HDLC), while one—the French Quarter—is administered by the Vieux Carre Commission (VCC). Additionally, both the National Park Service, via the National Register of Historic Places, and the HDLC have landmarked individual buildings, many of which lie outside the boundaries of existing historic districts.^[73]

Housing styles include the shotgun house and the bungalow style. Creole cottages and townhouses, notable for their large courtyards and intricate iron balconies, line the streets of the French Quarter. American townhouses, double-gallery houses, and Raised Center-Hall Cottages are notable. St. Charles Avenue is famed for its large antebellum homes. Its mansions are in various styles, such as Greek Revival, American Colonial and the Victorian styles of Queen Anne and Italianate architecture. New Orleans is also noted for its large, European-style Catholic cemeteries.

Tallest buildings

For much of its history, New Orleans’ skyline displayed only low- and mid- rise structures. The soft soils are susceptible to subsidence, and there was doubt about the feasibility of constructing high rises. Developments in engineering throughout the twentieth century eventually made it possible to build sturdy foundations in the foundations that underlie the structures. In the 1960s, the World Trade Center New Orleans and Plaza Tower demonstrated skyscrapers’ viability. One Shell Square became the city’s tallest building in 1972. The oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s redefined New Orleans’ skyline with the development of the Poydras Street corridor. Most are clustered along Canal Street and Poydras Street in the Central Business District.

Climate

The climate is humid subtropical (Köppen: Cfa), with short, generally mild winters and hot, humid summers; most suburbs and parts of Wards 9 and 15 fall in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 9a, while the city’s other 15 wards are rated 9b in whole.^[78] The monthly daily average temperature ranges from 53.4 °F (11.9 °C) in January to 83.3 °F (28.5 °C) in July and August. Officially, as measured at New Orleans International Airport, temperature records range from 11 to 102 °F (−12 to 39 °C) on December 23, 1989 and August 22, 1980, respectively; Audubon Park has recorded temperatures ranging from 6 °F (−14 °C) on February 13, 1899 up to 104 °F (40 °C) on June 24, 2009.^[75] Dewpoints in the summer months (June–August) are relatively high, ranging from 71.1 to 73.4 °F (21.7 to 23.0 °C).^[77]

The average precipitation is 62.5 inches (1,590 mm) annually; the summer months are the wettest, while October is the driest month.^[75] Precipitation in winter usually accompanies the passing of a cold front. On average, there are 77 days of 90 °F (32 °C)+ highs, 8.1 days per winter where the high does not exceed 50 °F (10 °C), and 8.0 nights with freezing lows annually. It is rare for the temperature to reach 20 or 100 °F (−7 or 38 °C), with the last occurrence of each being February 5, 1996 and June 26, 2016, respectively.^[75]

New Orleans experiences snowfall only on rare occasions. A small amount of snow fell during the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm and again on Christmas (December 25) when a combination of rain, sleet, and snow fell on the city, leaving some bridges icy. The New Year’s Eve 1963 snowstorm affected New Orleans and brought 4.5 inches (11 cm). Snow fell again on December 22, 1989, when most of the city received 1–2 inches (2.5–5.1 cm).

The last significant snowfall in New Orleans was on the morning of December 11, 2008.^{[citation needed]}

Threat from tropical cyclones

Hurricanes pose a severe threat to the area, and the city is particularly at risk because of its low elevation, because it is surrounded by water from the north, east, and south and because of Louisiana’s sinking coast.^[79] According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, New Orleans is the nation’s most vulnerable city to hurricanes.^[80] Indeed, portions of Greater New Orleans have been flooded by the Grand Isle Hurricane of 1909,^[81] the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915,^[81] 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane,^[81] Hurricane Flossy^[82] in 1956, Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Hurricane Georges in 1998, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, and Hurricane Gustav in 2008, with the flooding in Betsy being significant and in a few neighborhoods severe, and that in Katrina being disastrous in the majority of the city.^[83][84][85]

On August 29, 2005, storm surge from Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic failure of the federally designed and built levees, flooding 80% of the city.^[86][87] A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers says that “had the levees and floodwalls not failed and had the pump stations operated, nearly two-thirds of the deaths would not have occurred”.^[70]

New Orleans has always had to consider the risk of hurricanes, but the risks are dramatically greater today due to coastal erosion from human interference.^[88] Since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been estimated that Louisiana has lost 2,000 square miles (5,000 km²) of coast (including many of its barrier islands), which once protected New Orleans against storm surge. Following Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers has instituted massive levee repair and hurricane protection measures to protect the city.

In 2006, Louisiana voters overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the state’s constitution to dedicate all revenues from off-shore drilling to restore Louisiana’s eroding coast line.^[89] Congress has allocated $7 billion to bolster New Orleans’ flood protection.^[90]

According to a study by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, levees and floodwalls surrounding New Orleans—no matter how large or sturdy—cannot provide absolute protection against overtopping or failure in extreme events. Levees and floodwalls should be viewed as a way to reduce risks from hurricanes and storm surges, not as measures that completely eliminate risk. For structures in hazardous areas and residents who do not relocate, the committee recommended major floodproofing measures—such as elevating the first floor of buildings to at least the 100-year flood level.^[91]

Demographics

According to the 2010 Census, 343,829 people and 189,896 households lived in New Orleans. Its racial and ethnic makeup was 60.2% African American, 33.0% White, 2.9% Asian (1.7% Vietnamese, 0.3% Indian, 0.3% Chinese, 0.1% Filipino, 0.1% Korean), 0.0% Pacific Islander, and 1.7% were people of two or more races. People of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 5.3% of the population; 1.3% is Mexican, 1.3% Honduran, 0.4% Cuban, 0.3% Puerto Rican, and 0.3% Nicaraguan.^[103]

The last population estimate before Hurricane Katrina was 454,865, as of July 1, 2005.^[104] A population analysis released in August 2007 estimated the population to be 273,000, 60% of the pre-Katrina population and an increase of about 50,000 since July 2006.^[105] A September 2007 report by The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, which tracks population based on U.S. Postal Service figures, found that in August 2007, just over 137,000 households received mail. That compares with about 198,000 households in July 2005, representing about 70% of pre-Katrina population.^[106] More recently, the Census Bureau revised upward its 2008 population estimate for the city, to 336,644 inhabitants.^[58] In 2010, estimates showed that neighborhoods that did not flood were near or even greater than 100% of their pre-Katrina populations.^[107]

A 2006 study by researchers at Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley determined that as many as 10,000 to 14,000 undocumented immigrants, many from Mexico, resided in New Orleans.^[108] The New Orleans Police Department began a new policy to “no longer cooperate with federal immigration enforcement” beginning on February 28, 2016.^[109] Janet Murguía, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza, stated that up to 120,000 Hispanic workers lived in New Orleans. In June 2007, one study stated that the Hispanic population had risen from 15,000, pre-Katrina, to over 50,000.^[110]

As of 2010, 90.31% of residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 4.84% spoke Spanish, 1.87% Vietnamese, and 1.05% spoke French. In total, 9.69% population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.^[111]

Religion

New Orleans’ colonial history of French and Spanish settlement generated a strong Roman Catholic tradition. Catholic missions ministered to slaves and free people of color and established schools for them. In addition, many late 19th and early 20th century European immigrants, such as the Irish, some Germans, and Italians were Catholic. Within the Archdiocese of New Orleans (which includes not only the city but the surrounding parishes as well), 35.9% percent of the population is Roman Catholic.^[112] Catholicism is reflected in French and Spanish cultural traditions, including its many parochial schools, street names, architecture and festivals, including Mardi Gras.

Influenced by the Bible Belt‘s prominent Protestant population, New Orleans has a sizable non-Catholic demographic. 12.2% of the population are Baptist, followed by 5.1% from another Christian faith including Orthodox Christianity or Oriental Orthodoxy, 3.1% Methodist, 1.8% Episcopalian, 0.9% Presbyterian, 0.8% Lutheran, 0.8% Latter-Day Saint, and 0.6% Pentecostal.^[113]

New Orleans displays a distinctive variety of Louisiana Voodoo, due in part to syncretism with African and Afro-Caribbean Roman Catholic beliefs. The fame of voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau contributed to this, as did New Orleans’ Caribbean cultural influences.^{[114][115][116]} Although the tourism industry strongly associated Voodoo with the city, only a small number of people are serious adherents.

Jewish settlers, primarily Sephardim, settled in New Orleans from the early nineteenth century. Some migrated from the communities established in the colonial years in Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. The merchant Abraham Cohen Labatt helped found the first Jewish congregation in New Orleans in the 1830s, which became known as the Portuguese Jewish Nefutzot Yehudah congregation (he and some other members were Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors had lived in Portugal and Spain). Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe immigrated in the late 19th and 20th centuries. By the 21st century, 10,000 Jews lived in New Orleans. This number dropped to 7,000 after Hurricane Katrina, but rose again after efforts to incentivize the community’s growth resulted in the arrival of about an additional 2,000 Jews.^[117] New Orleans synagogues lost members, but most re-opened in their original locations. The exception was Congregation Beth Israel, the oldest and most prominent Orthodox synagogue in the New Orleans region. Beth Israel’s building in Lakeview was destroyed by flooding. After seven years of holding services in temporary quarters, the congregation consecrated a new synagogue on land purchased from the Reform Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie.^[118]

Ethnic groups

The earliest Filipino Americans to live within the city arrived in the early 1800s.^[119]

As of 2011 the Hispanic population had grown in the New Orleans area, including in Kenner, central Metairie, and Terrytown in Jefferson Parish and eastern New Orleans and Mid-City in New Orleans proper.^[120]

After Katrina the small Brazilian-American population expanded. Portuguese speakers were the second most numerous group to take English as a second language classes in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, after Spanish speakers. Many Brazilians worked in skilled trades such as tile and flooring, although fewer worked as day laborers than did Latinos. Many had moved from Brazilian communities in the Northeastern United States, particularly Florida and Georgia. Brazilians settled throughout the metropolitan area. Most were undocumented. In January 2008 the New Orleans Brazilian population had a mid-range estimate of 3,000. By 2008 Brazilians had opened many small churches, shops and restaurants catering to their community.^[121]

Changes in population

Beginning in 1960, the population decreased^[122][123] due to factors such as the cycles of oil production and tourism, and as suburbanization increased (as with many cities),^[124] and jobs migrated to surrounding parishes.^[125] This economic and population decline resulted in high levels of poverty in the city; in 1960 it had the fifth-highest poverty rate of all US cities,^[126] and was almost twice the national average in 2005, at 24.5%.^[124] New Orleans experienced an increase in residential segregation from 1900 to 1980, leaving the disproportionately African-American poor^[125] in older, low-lying locations. These areas were especially susceptible to flood and storm damage.^[127]

Katrina displaced 800,000 people, contributing significantly to the decline.^[128] African Americans, renters, the elderly, and people with low income were disproportionately affected by Katrina, compared to affluent and white residents.^[129][130] In Katrina’s aftermath, city government commissioned groups such as Bring New Orleans Back Commission, the New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilding Plan, the Unified New Orleans Plan, and the Office of Recovery Management to contribute to plans addressing depopulation. Their ideas included shrinking the city’s footprint from before the storm, incorporating community voices into development plans, and creating green spaces,^[129] some of which incited controversy.^[131][132]

From 2010 to 2014 the city grew by 12%, adding an average of more than 10,000 new residents each year following the 2010 Census.^[92]

Economy

New Orleans operates one of the world’s largest and busiest ports and metropolitan New Orleans is a center of maritime industry. The region accounts for a significant portion of the nation’s oil refining and petrochemical production, and serves as a white-collar corporate base for onshore and offshore petroleum and natural gas production.

New Orleans is also a center for higher learning, with over 50,000 students enrolled in the region’s eleven two- and four-year degree-granting institutions. Tulane University, a top-50 research university, is located in Uptown. Metropolitan New Orleans is a major regional hub for the health care industry and boasts a small, globally competitive manufacturing sector. The center city possesses a rapidly growing, entrepreneurial creative industries sector and is renowned for its cultural tourism. Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO, Inc.)^[133] acts as the first point-of-contact for regional economic development, coordinating between Louisiana’s Department of Economic Development and the various business development agencies.

Port

New Orleans began as a strategically located trading entrepôt and it remains, above all, a crucial transportation hub and distribution center for waterborne commerce. The Port of New Orleans is the fifth-largest in the United States based on cargo volume, and second-largest in the state after the Port of South Louisiana. It is the twelfth-largest in the U.S. based on cargo value. The Port of South Louisiana, also located in the New Orleans area, is the world’s busiest in terms of bulk tonnage. When combined with Port of New Orleans, it forms the 4th-largest port system in volume. Many shipbuilding, shipping, logistics, freight forwarding and commodity brokerage firms either are based in metropolitan New Orleans or maintain a local presence. Examples include Intermarine, Bisso Towboat, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Trinity Yachts, Expeditors International, Bollinger Shipyards, IMTT, International Coffee Corp, Boasso America, Transoceanic Shipping, Transportation Consultants Inc., Dupuy Storage & Forwarding and Silocaf. The largest coffee-roasting plant in the world, operated by Folgers, is located in New Orleans East.

New Orleans is located near to the Gulf of Mexico and its many oil rigs. Louisiana ranks fifth among states in oil production and eighth in reserves. It has two of the four Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) storage facilities: West Hackberry in Cameron Parish and Bayou Choctaw in Iberville Parish. The area hosts 17 petroleum refineries, with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly 2.8 million barrels per day (450,000 m³/d), the second highest after Texas. Louisiana’s numerous ports include the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which is capable of receiving the largest oil tankers. Given the quantity of oil imports, Louisiana is home to many major pipelines: Crude Oil (Exxon, Chevron, BP, Texaco, Shell, Scurloch-Permian, Mid-Valley, Calumet, Conoco, Koch Industries, Unocal, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Locap); Product (TEPPCO Partners, Colonial, Plantation, Explorer, Texaco, Collins); and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Dixie, TEPPCO, Black Lake, Koch, Chevron, Dynegy, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, Dow Chemical Company, Bridgeline, FMP, Tejas, Texaco, UTP).^[134] Several energy companies have regional headquarters in the area, including Royal Dutch Shell, Eni and Chevron. Other energy producers and oilfield services companies are headquartered in the city or region, and the sector supports a large professional services base of specialized engineering and design firms, as well as a term office for the federal government’s Minerals Management Service.

Business

The city is the home to a single Fortune 500 company: Entergy, a power generation utility and nuclear power plant operations specialist. After Katrina, the city lost its other Fortune 500 company, Freeport-McMoRan, when it merged its copper and gold exploration unit with an Arizona company and relocated that division to Phoenix. Its McMoRan Exploration affiliate remains headquartered in New Orleans.

Companies with significant operations or headquarters in New Orleans include: Pan American Life Insurance, Pool Corp, Rolls-Royce, Newpark Resources, AT&T, TurboSquid, iSeatz, IBM, Navtech, Superior Energy Services, Textron Marine & Land Systems, McDermott International, Pellerin Milnor, Lockheed Martin, Imperial Trading, Laitram, Harrah’s Entertainment, Stewart Enterprises, Edison Chouest Offshore, Zatarain’s, Waldemar S. Nelson & Co., Whitney National Bank, Capital One, Tidewater Marine, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, Parsons Brinckerhoff, MWH Global, CH2M HILL, Energy Partners Ltd, The Receivables Exchange, GE Capital and Smoothie King.

Tourist and convention business

Tourism is a staple of the city’s economy. Perhaps more visible than any other sector, New Orleans’ tourist and convention industry is a $5.5 billion industry that accounts for 40 percent of city tax revenues. In 2004, the hospitality industry employed 85,000 people, making it the city’s top economic sector as measured by employment.^[135] New Orleans also hosts the World Cultural Economic Forum (WCEF). The forum, held annually at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, is directed toward promoting cultural and economic development opportunities through the strategic convening of cultural ambassadors and leaders from around the world. The first WCEF took place in October 2008.^[136]

Other

Federal agencies and the Armed forces operate significant facilities there. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals operates at the US Courthouse downtown. NASA‘s Michoud rocket factory is located in New Orleans East and is operated by Lockheed Martin. It is a huge manufacturing facility that produced the external fuel tanks for the Space Shuttles and is now used for the construction of NASA’s Space Launch System. The rocket factory lies within the enormous New Orleans Regional Business Park, also home to the National Finance Center, operated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Crescent Crown distribution center. Other large governmental installations include the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Command, located within the University of New Orleans Research and Technology Park in Gentilly, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans; and the headquarters for the Marine Force Reserves in Federal City in Algiers.

Culture and contemporary life

Tourism

New Orleans has many visitor attractions, from the world-renowned French Quarter to St. Charles Avenue, (home of Tulane and Loyola Universities, the historic Pontchartrain Hotel and many 19th-century mansions) to Magazine Street with its boutique stores and antique shops.

According to current travel guides, New Orleans is one of the top ten most-visited cities in the United States; 10.1 million visitors came to New Orleans in 2004.^[135][137] Prior to Katrina, 265 hotels with 38,338 rooms operated in the Greater New Orleans Area. In May 2007, that had declined to some 140 hotels and motels with over 31,000 rooms.^[138]

A 2009 Travel + Leisure poll of “America’s Favorite Cities” ranked New Orleans first in ten categories, the most first-place rankings of the 30 cities included. According to the poll, New Orleans was the best U.S. city as a spring break destination and for “wild weekends”, stylish boutique hotels, cocktail hours, singles/bar scenes, live music/concerts and bands, antique and vintage shops, cafés/coffee bars, neighborhood restaurants, and people watching. The city ranked second for: friendliness (behind Charleston, South Carolina), gay-friendliness (behind San Francisco), bed and breakfast hotels/inns, and ethnic food. However, the city placed near the bottom in cleanliness, safety and as a family destination.^[139][140]

The French Quarter (known locally as “the Quarter” or Vieux Carré), which was the colonial-era city and is bounded by the Mississippi River, Rampart Street, Canal Street, and Esplanade Avenue, contains popular hotels, bars and nightclubs. Notable tourist attractions in the Quarter include Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral, the French Market (including Café du Monde, famous for café au lait and beignets) and Preservation Hall. Also in the French Quarter is the old New Orleans Mint, a former branch of the United States Mint which now operates as a museum, and The Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum and research center housing art and artifacts relating to the history and the Gulf South.

Close to the Quarter is the Tremé community, which contains the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park and the New Orleans African American Museum — a site which is listed on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

The Natchez is an authentic steamboat with a calliope that cruises the length of the city twice daily. Unlike most other places in the United States, New Orleans has become widely known for its elegant decay. The city’s historic cemeteries and their distinct above-ground tombs are attractions in themselves, the oldest and most famous of which, Saint Louis Cemetery, greatly resembles Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The National WWII Museum offers a multi-building odyssey through the history of the Pacific and European theaters. Nearby, Confederate Memorial Hall Museum, the oldest continually operating museum in Louisiana (although under renovation since Hurricane Katrina), contains the second-largest collection of Confederate memorabilia. Art museums include the Contemporary Arts Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) in City Park, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

New Orleans is home to the Audubon Nature Institute (which consists of Audubon Park, the Audubon Zoo, the Aquarium of the Americas and the Audubon Insectarium), and home to gardens which include Longue Vue House and Gardens and the New Orleans Botanical Garden. City Park, one of the country’s most expansive and visited urban parks, has one of the largest stands of oak trees in the world.

Other points of interest can be found in the surrounding areas. Many wetlands are found nearby, including Honey Island Swamp and Barataria Preserve. Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery, located just south of the city, is the site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

In 2009, New Orleans ranked No. 7 on Newsmax magazine’s list of the “Top 25 Most Uniquely American Cities and Towns”. The piece cited the city’s post-Katrina rebuilding effort as well as its efforts to become eco-friendly.^[141]

Entertainment and performing arts

The New Orleans area is home to numerous annual celebrations. The most well known is Carnival, or Mardi Gras. Carnival officially begins on the Feast of the Epiphany, also known in some Christian traditions as the “Twelfth Night” of Christams. Mardi Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”), the final and grandest day of traditional Catholic festivities, is the last Tuesday before the Christian liturgical season of Lent, which commences on Ash Wednesday.

The largest of the city’s many music festivals is the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Commonly referred to simply as “Jazz Fest”, it is one of the nation’s largest music festivals. The festival features a variety of music, including both native Louisiana and international artists. Along with Jazz Fest, New Orleans’ Voodoo Experience (“Voodoo Fest”) and the Essence Music Festival also feature local and international artists.

Other major festivals include Southern Decadence, the French Quarter Festival, and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The American playwright lived and wrote in New Orleans early in his career, and set his play, Streetcar Named Desire, here.

In 2002, Louisiana began offering tax incentives for film and television production. This has resulted in a substantial increase in activity and brought the nickname of “Hollywood South” for New Orleans. Films produced in and around the city include Ray, Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief, Glory Road, All the King’s Men, Déjà Vu, Last Holiday, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 12 Years a Slave. In 2006, work began on the Louisiana Film & Television studio complex, based in the Tremé neighborhood.^[142] Louisiana began to offer similar tax incentives for music and theater productions in 2007, and some commentators began to refer to New Orleans as “Broadway South.”^[143]

The first theatre in New Orleans was the French-language Theatre de la Rue Saint Pierre, which opened in 1792. The first opera in New Orleans was performed there in 1796. In the nineteenth century, the city was the home of two of America’s most important venues for French opera, the Théâtre d’Orléans and later the French Opera House. Today, opera is performed by the New Orleans Opera. The Marigny Opera House is home to the Marigny Opera Ballet and also hosts opera, jazz, and classical music performances.

New Orleans has long been a significant center for music, showcasing its intertwined European, African and Latin American cultures. The city’s unique musical heritage was born in its colonial and early American days from a unique blending of European musical instruments with African rhythms. As the only North American city to have allowed slaves to gather in public and play their native music (largely in Congo Square, now located within Louis Armstrong Park), New Orleans gave birth in the early 20th century to an epochal indigenous music: jazz. Soon, African-American brass bands formed, beginning a century-long tradition. The Louis Armstrong Park area, near the French Quarter in Tremé, contains the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. The city’s music was later also significantly influenced by Acadiana, home of Cajun and Zydeco music, and by Delta blues.

New Orleans’ unique musical culture is on display in its traditional funerals. A spin on military funerals, New Orleans’ traditional funerals feature sad music (mostly dirges and hymns) in processions on the way to the cemetery and happier music (hot jazz) on the way back. Until the 1990s, most locals preferred to call these “funerals with music.” Visitors to the city have long dubbed them “jazz funerals.”

Much later in its musical development, New Orleans was home to a distinctive brand of rhythm and blues that contributed greatly to the growth of rock and roll. An example of the New Orleans’ sound in the 1960s is the #1 US hit “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups, a song which knocked the Beatles out of the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. New Orleans became a hotbed for funk music in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the late 1980s, it had developed its own localized variant of hip hop, called bounce music. While not commercially successful outside of the Deep South, bounce music was immensely popular in poorer neighborhoods throughout the 1990s.

A cousin of bounce, New Orleans hip hop achieved commercial success locally and internationally, producing Lil Wayne, Master P, Birdman, Juvenile, Cash Money Records and No Limit Records. Additionally, the popularity of cowpunk, a fast form of southern rock, originated with the help of several local bands, such as The Radiators, Better Than Ezra, Cowboy Mouth and Dash Rip Rock. Throughout the 1990s, many sludge metal bands started. New Orleans’ heavy metal bands such as Eyehategod,^[144] Soilent Green,^[145] Crowbar,^[146] and Down^[147] incorporated styles such as hardcore punk, doom metal, and southern rock to create an original and heady brew of swampy and aggravated metal that has largely avoided standardization.^{[144][145][146][147]}

New Orleans is the southern terminus of the famed Highway 61, made musically famous by musician Bob Dylan in his song, “Highway 61 Revisited”.

Food

New Orleans is world-famous for its food. The indigenous cuisine is distinctive and influential. New Orleans food combined local Creole, haute Creole and New Orleans French cuisines. Local ingredients, French, Spanish, Italian, African, Native American, Cajun, Chinese, and a hint of Cuban traditions combine to produce a truly unique and easily recognizable New Orleans flavor.

New Orleans is known for specialties including beignets (locally pronounced like “ben-yays”), square-shaped fried dough that could be called “French doughnuts” (served with café au lait made with a blend of coffee and chicory rather than only coffee); and po’ boy^[148] and Italian muffuletta sandwiches; Gulf oysters on the half-shell, fried oysters, boiled crawfish and other seafood; étouffée, jambalaya, gumbo and other Creole dishes; and the Monday favorite of red beans and rice (Louis Armstrong often signed his letters, “Red beans and ricely yours”). Another New Orleans specialty is the praline locally /ˈprɑːliːn/, a candy made with brown sugar, granulated sugar, cream, butter, and pecans. The city offers notable street food^[149] including the Asian inspired beef Yaka mein.

Dialect

New Orleans developed a distinctive local dialect that is neither Cajun nor the stereotypical Southern accent that is often misportrayed by film and television actors. Like earlier Southern Englishes, feature frequent deletion of the pre-consonantal “r”. This dialect is quite similar to New York City area accents such as “Brooklynese“, to people unfamiliar with either.^[150] No consensus describes how it came to be, but it likely resulted from New Orleans’ geographic isolation by water and the fact that the city was a major immigration port throughout the 19th century. As a result, many of the ethnic groups who reside in Brooklyn also reside in New Orleans, such as the Irish, Italians (especially Sicilians), Germans and a Jewish community.^[151]

One of the strongest varieties of the New Orleans accent is sometimes identified as the Yat dialect, from the greeting “Where y’at?” This distinctive accent is dying out in the city, but remains strong in the surrounding parishes.

Less visibly, various ethnic groups throughout the area have retained distinct language traditions. Although rare, languages still spoken include Cajun, the Kreyol Lwiziyen spoken by the Creoles and an archaic Louisiana-Canarian Spanish dialect spoken by the Isleño people and older members of the population.

Voodoo

Reliable documentation of Voodoo does not exist because of the definitive claim that it is secretive. Voodoo existed in New Orleans-in some of its facets it probably still exists in the modern-day. The likelihood that the slave-developed religion possessed many white followers alongside its black participants is high. Voodoo as described by the distinguished novelist George Washington Cable is “the name of an imaginary being of vast supernatural powers residing in the form of a harmless snake”. Followers to these powers are known as the voodoos.

History and Origins

Multiple origins come from around the world and converge in pre-antebellum and antebellum New Orleans. Vodu as used by the Ewes of West Africa means fear of the gods. Vodun in Dahomy, West Africa, is a name for all deities. In French Vaudis referred to a witch. Throughout its history in New Orleans, Voodoo and Southern Negro shared folklore, superstitions, language and customs, and had their counterparts in West Africa.

Scholars have the noted the use of Roman Catholic saints and liturgies in voodoo worship including black cats, serpents and the color red. These European and African motifs signify evil, the devil, blood, sin, sacrifice, harlotry. After existing in New Orleans for decades, in 1800 when Haitian and West Indian blacks were forced to Louisiana the hexes and secret revenges were incorporated into the system of slavery.

White southerners thought Voodoo to be primarily African in origin, and they fitted the practice of it into their beliefs that black men were primitive and inferior. In reality the Voodoo religion/culture is a mixture of African, Caribbean, and European influences.

For further information St. John’s Eve has had an important relationship to Voodoo in its openness during celebrations.

Sports

New Orleans’ professional sports teams include the 2009 Super Bowl XLIV champion New Orleans Saints (NFL) and the New Orleans Pelicans (NBA).^[152] It is also home to the Big Easy Rollergirls, an all-female flat track roller derby team, and the New Orleans Blaze, a women’s football team.^[153][154] New Orleans is also home to two NCAA Division I athletic programs, the Tulane Green Wave of the American Athletic Conference and the UNO Privateers of the Southland Conference.

The Mercedes-Benz Superdome is the home of the Saints, the Sugar Bowl, and other prominent events. It has hosted the Super Bowl a record seven times (1978, 1981, 1986, 1990, 1997, 2002, and 2013). The Smoothie King Center is the home of the Pelicans, VooDoo, and many events that are not large enough to need the Superdome. New Orleans is also home to the Fair Grounds Race Course, the nation’s third-oldest thoroughbred track. The city’s Lakefront Arena has also been home to sporting events.

Each year New Orleans plays host to the Sugar Bowl, the New Orleans Bowl and the Zurich Classic, a golf tournament on the PGA Tour. In addition, it has often hosted major sporting events that have no permanent home, such as the Super Bowl, ArenaBowl, NBA All-Star Game, BCS National Championship Game, and the NCAA Final Four. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Mardi Gras Marathon and the Crescent City Classic are two annual road running events.

National protected areas

• Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge
• Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (part)
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
• Vieux Carre Historic District

Government

The city is a political subdivision of the state of Louisiana. It has a mayor-council government, following a Home Rule Charter adopted in 1954, as later amended. The city council consists of seven members, who are elected by single-member districts and two members elected at-large, that is, across the city-parish. LaToya Cantrell assumed the mayor’s office in 2018. Cantrell is the first female mayor of New Orleans. The Orleans Parish Civil Sheriff’s Office serves papers involving lawsuits and provides security for the Civil District Court and Juvenile Courts. The criminal sheriff, Marlin Gusman, maintains the parish prison system, provides security for the Criminal District Court, and provides backup for the New Orleans Police Department on an as-needed basis. An ordinance in 2006 established an Office of Inspector General to review city government activities.

The city and the parish of Orleans operate as a merged city-parish government.^[155] The original city was composed of what are now the 1st through 9th wards. The city of Lafayette (including the Garden District) was added in 1852 as the 10th and 11th wards. In 1870, Jefferson City, including Faubourg Bouligny and much of the Audubon and University areas, was annexed as the 12th, 13th, and 14th wards. Algiers, on the west bank of the Mississippi, was also annexed in 1870, becoming the 15th ward.

New Orleans’ government is largely centralized in the city council and mayor’s office, but it maintains earlier systems from when various sections of the city managed their affairs separately. For example, New Orleans had seven elected tax assessors, each with their own staff, representing various districts of the city, rather than one centralized office. A constitutional amendment passed on November 7, 2006 consolidated the seven assessors into one in 2010.^[156] The New Orleans government operates both a fire department and the New Orleans Emergency Medical Services.

Crime

Murder capital

Crime is an ongoing problem in New Orleans. As in comparable US cities, the incidence of homicide and other violent crimes is highly concentrated in certain impoverished neighborhoods.^[157] The murder rate for the city has been historically high and consistently among the highest rates nationwide. From 1994-2013, New Orleans was the nation’s “Murder Capital”, averaging over 250+ murders yearly.^[158] The first record was broken in 1979 when the city reached 242 homicides.^[159] The record was broken again reaching 250 by 1989 to 345 by the end of 1991.^[160][161] By 1993 New Orleans had 395 murders: 79.5 for every 100,000 residents.^[162]

1994 was the year the city was officially named the “Murder Capital of America”, hitting a historic peak at 424. The murder count surpassed that of such cities as Gary, Indiana, Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore and Miami.^{[163][164] [165] [166]}

In 2003 the New Orleans homicide rate was nearly eight times the national average and the city had the highest per capita city murder rate of any city in the United States, with 274 homicides, up from the previous year.^{[167][168][169][165]} According to the local officials, New Orleans retained its status as the nation’s murder capital for the second time since 1994.^[165] In 2006, with nearly half the population gone and widespread disruption and dislocation because of deaths and refugee relocations from Hurricane Katrina, the city hit another record of homicides. It was ranked as the most dangerous city in the country.^[170][171]

By 2009, there was a 17% decrease in violent crime, a decrease seen in other cities across the country. But the homicide rate remained among the highest^[172] in the United States, at between 55 and 64 per 100,000 residents.^[173] In 2010, New Orleans’ homicide rate dropped to 49.1 per 100,000, but increased again in 2012, to 53.2.^[174][175] This was the highest rate among cities of 250,000 population or larger.^[176] Arrested offenders in New Orleans are almost exclusively black males from impoverished communities: 97% were black and 95% were male, and many of their victims are black.^[177]

The violent crime rate was a key issue in the 2010 mayoral race. In January 2007, several thousand New Orleans residents marched to City Hall for a rally demanding police and city leaders tackle the crime problem. Then-Mayor Ray Nagin said he was “totally and solely focused” on addressing the problem. Later, the city implemented checkpoints during late night hours in problem areas.^[178] The murder rate climbed 14% in 2011 to 57.88 per 100,000^[179] rising to #21 in the world.^[180] In 2016, according to annual crime statistics released by the New Orleans Police Department, 176 were murdered.^{[181][182][174]} In 2017, New Orleans had the highest rate of gun violence surpassing the larger populated Chicago and Detroit.^[183][184]

Education

Colleges and universities

New Orleans has the highest concentration of colleges and universities in Louisiana and one of the highest in the southern United States.

Colleges and universities based within the city include:

• Tulane University, a private, major research university founded in 1834.
• Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit university founded in 1912.
• University of New Orleans, a public, urban research university.
• Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Catholic university in the United States.
• Southern University at New Orleans, a public, historically black university in the Southern University System.
• Dillard University, a private, historically black liberal arts college founded in 1869.
• Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
• University of Holy Cross, a Catholic liberal arts college founded in 1916.
• Notre Dame Seminary
• New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
• Delgado Community College, founded in 1921.
• William Carey College School of Nursing
• Herzing College
• New Orleans Culinary Institute

Primary and secondary schools

New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) is the city’s public school system. Katrina was a watershed moment for the school system. Pre-Katrina, NOPS was one of the area’s largest systems (along with the Jefferson Parish public school system). It was also the lowest-performing school district in Louisiana. According to researchers Carl L. Bankston and Stephen J. Caldas, only 12 of the 103 public schools within the city limits showed reasonably good performance.^[185]

Following Hurricane Katrina, the state of Louisiana took over most of the schools within the system (all schools that matched a nominal “worst-performing” metric). Many of these schools (and others) were subsequently granted operating charters giving them administrative independence from the Orleans Parish School Board, the Recovery School District and/or the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). At the start of the 2014 school year, all public school students in the NOPS system attended these independent public charter schools, the nation’s first to do so.^[186]

The charter schools made significant and sustained gains in student achievement, led by outside operators such as KIPP, the Algiers Charter School Network, and the Capital One – University of New Orleans Charter School Network. An October 2009 assessment demonstrated continued growth in the academic performance of public schools. Considering the scores of all public schools in New Orleans gives an overall school district performance score of 70.6. This score represents a 24% improvement over an equivalent pre-Katrina (2004) metric, when a district score of 56.9 was posted.^[187] Notably, this score of 70.6 approaches the score (78.4) posted in 2009 by the adjacent, suburban Jefferson Parish public school system, though that system’s performance score is itself below the state average of 91.^[188]

One particular change was that parents could choose which school to enroll their children in, rather than attending the school nearest them.^[189]

Libraries

Academic and public libraries as well as archives in New Orleans include Monroe Library at Loyola University, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University,^[190] the Law Library of Louisiana,^[191] and the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans.^[192]

The New Orleans Public Library operates in 13 locations.^[193] The main library includes a Louisiana Division that houses city archives and special collections.^[194]

Other research archives are located at the Historic New Orleans Collection^[195] and the Old U.S. Mint.^[196]

An independently operated lending library called Iron Rail Book Collective specializes in radical and hard-to-find books. The library contains over 8,000 titles and is open to the public.

The Louisiana Historical Association was founded in New Orleans in 1889. It operated first at Howard Memorial Library. A separate Memorial Hall for it was later added to Howard Library, designed by New Orleans architect Thomas Sully.^[197]

Media

Historically, the major newspaper in the area was The Times-Picayune. The paper made headlines of its own in 2012 when owner Advance Publications cut its print schedule to three days each week, instead focusing its efforts on its website, NOLA.com. That action briefly made New Orleans the largest city in the country without a daily newspaper, until the Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate began a New Orleans edition in September 2012. In June 2013, the Times-Picayune resumed daily printing with a condensed newsstand tabloid edition, nicknamed TP Street, which is published on the three days each week that its namesake broadsheet edition is not printed (the Picayune has not returned to daily delivery). With the resumption of daily print editions from the Times-Picayune and the launch of the New Orleans edition of The Advocate, now The New Orleans Advocate, the city had two daily newspapers for the first time since the afternoon States-Item ceased publication on May 31, 1980. In 2019, the papers merged to form The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate.

In addition to the daily newspaper, weekly publications include The Louisiana Weekly and Gambit Weekly.^[198] Also, in wide circulation is the Clarion Herald, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Greater New Orleans is the 54th largest Designated Market Area (DMA) in the U.S., serving 566,960 homes.^[199] Major television network affiliates serving the area include:

WWOZ,^[200] the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station, broadcasts^[201] modern and traditional jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, brass band, gospel, cajun, zydeco, Caribbean, Latin, Brazilian, African and bluegrass 24 hours per day.

WTUL,^[202] is the Tulane University radio station. Its programming includes 20th century classical, reggae, jazz, showtunes, indie rock, electronic music, soul/funk, goth, punk, hip hop, New Orleans music, opera, folk, hardcore, Americana, country, blues, Latin, cheese, techno, local, world, ska, swing and big band, kids shows, and news programming. WTUL is listener supported and non-commercial. The disc jockeys are volunteers, many of them college students.

Louisiana’s film and television tax credits spurred growth in the television industry, although to a lesser degree than in the film industry. Many films and advertisements were set there, along with television programs such as The Real World: New Orleans in 2000,^[203] The Real World: Back to New Orleans in 2009 and 2010^[204][205] and Bad Girls Club: New Orleans in 2011.^[206]

Two radio stations that were influential in promoting New Orleans-based bands and singers were 50,000-watt WNOE-AM (1060) and 10,000-watt WTIX (690 AM). These two stations competed head-to-head from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.

Transportation

Public transportation

Hurricane Katrina devastated transit service in 2005. The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) was quicker to restore the streetcars to service, while bus service had only been restored to 35% of pre-Katrina levels as recently as the end of 2013. During the same period, streetcars arrived at an average of once every seventeen minutes, compared to bus frequencies of once every thirty-eight minutes. The same priority was demonstrated in RTA’s spending, increasing the proportion of its budget devoted to streetcars to more than three times compared to its pre-Katrina budget.^[207] Through the end of 2017, counting both streetcar and bus trips, only 51% of service had been restored to pre-Katrina levels.^[208]

In 2017, the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority began operation on the extension of the Rampart–St. Claude streetcar line. Another change to transit service that year was the re-routing of the 15 Freret and 28 Martin Luther King bus routes to Canal Street. These increased the number of jobs accessible by a thirty-minute walk or transit ride: from 83,722 in 2016 to 89,216 in 2017. This resulted in a regional increase in such job access by more than a full percentage point.^[208]

Streetcars

New Orleans has four active streetcar lines:

• The St. Charles Streetcar Line is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in America.^{[citation needed]} The line first operated as local rail service in 1835 between Carrollton and downtown New Orleans. Operated by the Carrollton & New Orleans R.R. Co., the locomotives were then powered by steam engines, and a one-way fare cost 25 cents.^[209] Each car is a historic landmark. It runs from Canal Street to the other end of St. Charles Avenue, then turns right into South Carrollton Avenue to its terminal at Carrollton and Claiborne.
• The Riverfront Streetcar Line runs parallel to the river from Esplanade Street through the French Quarter to Canal Street to the Convention Center above Julia Street in the Arts District.
• The Canal Streetcar Line uses the Riverfront line tracks from the intersection of Canal Street and Poydras Street, down Canal Street, then branches off and ends at the cemeteries at City Park Avenue, with a spur running from the intersection of Canal and Carrollton Avenue to the entrance of City Park at Esplanade, near the entrance to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
• The Rampart–St. Claude Streetcar Line opened on January 28, 2013 as the Loyola-UPT Line running along Loyola Avenue from New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal to Canal Street, then continuing along Canal Street to the river, and on weekends on the Riverfront line tracks to French Market. The French Quarter Rail Expansion extended the line from the Loyola Avenue/Canal Street intersection along Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenue to Elysian Fields Avenue. It no longer runs along Canal Street to the river, or on weekends on the Riverfront line tracks to French Market.

The city’s streetcars were featured in the Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire. The streetcar line to Desire Street became a bus line in 1948.

Buses

Public transportation is operated by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (“RTA”). Many bus routes connect the city and suburban areas. The RTA lost 200+ buses in the flood. Some of the replacement buses operate on biodiesel.^{[citation needed]} The Jefferson Parish Department of Transit Administration^[210] operates Jefferson Transit, which provides service between the city and its suburbs.^[211]

Ferries

New Orleans has had continuous ferry service since 1827,^[212] operating three routes as of 2017. The Canal Street Ferry (or Algiers Ferry) connects downtown New Orleans at the foot of Canal Street with the National Historic Landmark District of Algiers Point across the Mississippi (“West Bank” in local parlance). It services passenger vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. This same terminal also serves the Canal Street/Gretna Ferry, connecting Gretna, Louisiana for pedestrians and bicyclists only. A third auto/bicycle/pedestrian connects Chalmette, Louisiana and Lower Algiers.^[213]

Bicycling

The city’s flat landscape, simple street grid and mild winters facilitate bicycle ridership, helping to make New Orleans eighth among U.S. cities in its rate of bicycle and pedestrian transportation as of 2010,^[214] and sixth in terms of the percentage of bicycling commuters.^[215] New Orleans is located at the start of the Mississippi River Trail, a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) bicycle path that stretches from the city’s Audubon Park to Minnesota.^[216] Since Katrina the city has actively sought to promote bicycling by constructing a $1.5 million bike trail from Mid-City to Lake Pontchartrain,^[217] and by adding over 37 miles (60 km) of bicycle lanes to various streets, including St. Charles Avenue.^[214] In 2009, Tulane University contributed to these efforts by converting the main street through its Uptown campus, McAlister Place, into a pedestrian mall open to bicycle traffic.^[218] A 3.1-mile (5.0 km) bicycle corridor stretches from the French Quarter to Lakeview, and 14 miles (23 km) of additional bike lanes on existing streets.^[215] New Orleans has been recognized for its abundance of uniquely decorated and uniquely designed bicycles.^[219]

Roads

New Orleans is served by Interstate 10, Interstate 610 and Interstate 510. I-10 travels east–west through the city as the Pontchartrain Expressway. In New Orleans East it is known as the Eastern Expressway. I-610 provides a direct shortcut for traffic passing through New Orleans via I-10, allowing that traffic to bypass I-10’s southward curve.

In addition to the interstates, U.S. 90 travels through the city, while U.S. 61 terminates downtown. In addition, U.S. 11 terminates in the eastern portion of the city.

New Orleans is home to many bridges; Crescent City Connection is perhaps the most notable. It serves as New Orleans’ major bridge across the Mississippi, providing a connection between the city’s downtown on the eastbank and its westbank suburbs. Other Mississippi crossings are the Huey P. Long Bridge, carrying U.S. 90 and the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, carrying Interstate 310.

The Twin Span Bridge, a five-mile (8 km) causeway in eastern New Orleans, carries I-10 across Lake Pontchartrain. Also in eastern New Orleans, Interstate 510/LA 47 travels across the Intracoastal Waterway/Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal via the Paris Road Bridge, connecting New Orleans East and suburban Chalmette.

The tolled Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, consisting of two parallel bridges are, at 24 miles (39 km) long, the longest bridges in the world. Built in the 1950s (southbound span) and 1960s (northbound span), the bridges connect New Orleans with its suburbs on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain via Metairie.

Airports

The metropolitan area is served by the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, located in the suburb of Kenner. Regional airports include the Lakefront Airport, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans (Callender Field) in the suburb of Belle Chasse and Southern Seaplane Airport, also located in Belle Chasse. Southern Seaplane has a 3,200-foot (980 m) runway for wheeled planes and a 5,000-foot (1,500 m) water runway for seaplanes.

Armstrong International is the busiest airport in Louisiana and the only to handle scheduled international passenger flights. As of 2018, more than 13 million passengers passed through Armstrong, on nonstops flights from more than 57 destinations, including foreign nonstops from the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

Rail

The city is served by Amtrak. The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal is the central rail depot and is served by the Crescent, operating between New Orleans and New York City; the City of New Orleans, operating between New Orleans and Chicago and the Sunset Limited, operating between New Orleans and Los Angeles. Up until August 2005 (when Hurricane Katrina struck), the Sunset Limited’s route continued east to Orlando.

With the strategic benefits of both the port and its double-track Mississippi River crossings, the city attracted six of the seven Class I railroads in North America: Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, CSX Transportation and Canadian National Railway. The New Orleans Public Belt Railroad provides interchange services between the railroads.

Modal characteristics

According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 67.4% of working city of New Orleans residents commuted by driving alone, 9.7% carpooled, 7.3% used public transportation, and 4.9% walked. About 5% used all other forms of transportation, including taxicab, motorcycle, and bicycle. About 5.7% of working New Orleans residents worked at home.^[220]

Many city of New Orleans households own no personal automobiles. In 2015, 18.8% of New Orleans households were without a car, which increased to 20.2% in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. New Orleans averaged 1.26 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.^[221]

New Orleans ranks high among cities in terms of the percentage of working residents who commute by walking or bicycling. In 2013, 5% of working people from New Orleans commuted by walking and 2.8% commuted by cycling. During the same period, New Orleans ranked thirteenth for percentage of workers who commuted by walking or biking among cities not included within the fifty most populous cities. Only nine of the most fifty most populous cities had a higher percentage of commuters who walked or biked than did New Orleans in 2013.^[222]

Notable people

Sister cities

Notes

References