When Hurricane Katrina struck on 29 August 2005, the federally built levee and floodwall system failed and roughly 80 per cent of New Orleans flooded, killing well over a thousand people and displacing much of the population. Recovery prompted a contested sequence of planning efforts, from the Bring New Orleans Back Commission's controversial 'green dot' shrinkage proposals to the participatory Unified New Orleans Plan of 2006–07. The Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt the flood defences as a roughly 14.5 billion dollar risk-reduction system. The disaster fuelled a national focus on urban resilience and climate vulnerability.
Katrina became a landmark case in disaster recovery, equity and resilience planning and exposed the vulnerability of American cities to climate-driven flooding.
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