Coming Home to New Orleans documents grassroots rebuilding efforts in New Orleans neighborhoods after hurricane Katrina, and draws lessons on their contribution to the post-disaster recovery of cities. The book begins with two chapters that address Katrina's impact and the planning and public sector recovery policies that set the context for neighborhood recovery. Rebuilding narratives for six New Orleans neighborhoods are then presented and analyzed. In the heavily flooded Broadmoor and Village de L'Est neighborhoods, residents coalesced around communitywide initiatives, one through a neighborhood association and the second under church leadership, to help homeowners return and restore housing, get key public facilities and businesses rebuilt and create new community-based organizations and civic capacity. A comparison of four adjacent neighborhoods in the center of the city show how differing socioeconomic conditions, geography, government policies and neighborhood capacity created varied recovery trajectories. The concluding chapter argues that grassroots and neighborhood scale initiatives can make important contributions to city recovery in four areas: repopulation, restoring "complete neighborhoods " with key services and amenities, rebuilding parts of the small business economy and enhancing recovery capacity. It also calls for more balanced investments and policies to rebuild rental and owner-occupied housing and more deliberate collaboration with community-based organizations to undertake and implement recovery plans, and proposes changes to federal disaster recovery policies and programs to leverage the contribution of grassroots rebuilding and more support for city recovery.

"Incredible. What a major contribution, just to pull together the diverse array of information out there about development finance into one volume. I consider this book an 'education' for the lay reader, and a fabulous resource for the practitioner of development finance." -Dr. Rhonda Phillips, AICP, CED, University of Florida "This is the most comprehensive and best-written economic development text in the market. This would be a good text for a graduate level course and would work well with a one-semester teaching plan. . . The main strength of the book is the author's ability to summarize concepts, programs, and institutions and then draw from them issues, lessons, and challenges." -John S. Strong, School of Business, College of William and Mary Economic Development Finance is a comprehensive and in-depth presentation of private, public, and community financial institutions, policies and methods for financing local and regional economic development projects. The treatment of policies and program models emphasizes their applications and impact, key design and management issues, and best practices. A separate section addresses critical management issues for development finance programs: program and product design, the lending and investment process, and capital management. Case studies are included throughout the book to help readers develop their skills and apply policies and tools to real practice issues. A glossary of finance terms is also included. Economic Development Finance provides a foundation for students and professionals in the technical aspects of business and real estate finance and surveys the full range of policies, program models, and financing tools used in economic development practice within the United States. Learn more economic development strategies on Karl F. Seidman's Web site at www.kfsconsulting.com