It’s a question that’s being asked. Is it worth recreating what was there before?

The city’s romance is not the reality for most who live there. It’s a poor place, with about 27 percent of the population of 484,000 living under the poverty line, and it’s a black place, where 67 percent are African-American.

The state of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as “Academically Unacceptable” and another 26 percent are under “Academic Warning.”

The police inspire so little trust that witnesses often refuse to testify in court. University researchers enlisted the police in an experiment last year, having them fire 700 blank gun rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood one afternoon. Nobody picked up the phone to report the shootings. Little wonder the city’s homicide rate stands at 10 times the national average.

New Orleans puts the “D” into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools.

A number of factors mitigate against New Orleans becoming viable. The city’s geographical condition - low-lying, over-settled, ex-swamp, hurricane-prone - means that hurricane Katrina isn’t necessarily the worst it can get. Many of those with home insurance may realise this and decide to rebuild elsewhere - that will include many of New Orleans’ main professionals - and tax-payers: doctors, lawyers, professors and so on. The Wall Street Journal thinks many businesses will relocate completely.

The destruction wrought by Katrina may turn out to be “creative destruction,” to crib from Joseph Schumpeter, for many of New Orleans’ displaced and dispossessed. Unless the government works mightily to reverse migration, a positive side-effect of the uprooting of thousands of lives will to be to deconcentrate one of the worst pockets of ghetto poverty in the United States.

On paper the arguments make sense. However, the human factor is the intangible that can make all the difference. People - even those who know how bad things are in New Orleans - may still not want to live somewhere else. Even if it were easy to move them elsewhere New Orleans is where they have a lifetime of friends, family, experiences and memories. The irresistible pulls the city has on its inhabitants may well be the undoing of a large-scale removal plan.