This rich, interdisciplinary work straddles urban studies, American studies, history and literature, and looks at New Orlean's 'exceptional' status over the course of the twentieth century. As author Eckstein shows, 'sustainability' has multiple applications in the context of New Orleans history - not just the preservation of the city's rich historical legacy, but also the sustainability of its ecology, economy and social milieu. Eckstein's central theme is the longstanding contest between the city's Creole 'folkways', which sustain its rich historical memory, and the 'technicways' characteristic of planning experts and modern American mass culture. She explores how the city's voodoo and Creole traditions have both separated New Orleans from the rest of modern America and provided the 'folk' of the city an alternate tradition to look to. Throughout, providing the source material is New Orleans' fantastically rich cultural tradition: the works of Anne Rice, Tennessee Williams, Nelson Algren, Walker Percy, Ishmael Reed and Helen Prejean.

Story and Sustainability explores the role of story in planning theory and practice, with the goal of creating U.S. cities able to balance competing claims for economic growth, environmental health, and social justice. In the book, urban practitioners and scholars from fields as diverse as American studies, English, geography, history, planning, and criminal justice reflect critically on the traditional exclusionary power of storytelling and on its potential to facilitate the transformations of imagination, theory, and practice necessary to create sustainable, democratic American cities.The book begins with an editors' introduction identifying story, sustainable U.S. cities, and democracy as the three key themes. Part I advances and refines these concepts, connects them to contemporary U.S. urban planning, and provides tools that can be used when reading and interpreting the texts in part II. Part II exemplifies, amplifies, and modifies the key themes and arguments through the presentation of eight texts: theoretical and experiential, academic and nonacademic, expository and narrative, and familiar and unfamiliar. The combined focus on story and urban sustainability makes this book a unique contribution to planning literature.