(Alison Isenberg – Urban History) In the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, one pressing question is which urban design and preservation ideologies will have an impact on the rebuilding of the city and region.   Which individuals and interest groups, which “schools” of design thought have been and will be invited to participate, and which uninvited parties will try to get their voices heard?  Which developers and builders will carry through the reconstruction choices?  In particular, what role has New Urbanism and its advocates played in rebuilding discussions, and are there alternative visions and groups who are getting a hearing?   Which branches and components of the historic preservation community have been drawn into the decision-making?  An unusual climate has shaped the unfolding of rebuilding choices (unusual, at least, in the real estate world).   Namely, most people, government official and ordinary citizen alike, are hyper aware that in these rebuilding decisions hang the issues of whose history will be preserved, and whose future will be made.  To an extent unprecedented in recent U.S. history, the racialized and class-based dimensions of these rebuilding issues have been laid bare for all to see.   That the rebuilding decisions reflect value choices  rather than “free market choices” is equally obvious to all.   The Katrina disaster also tests a metropolitan conception of civic responsibility, revealing the extent to which race- and class-differentiated cities and suburbs are bound together by shared histories and futures.   My interest, then, is in understanding how the design and preservation choices are being made in metropolitan New Orleans, and by whom, and what values these choices reveal.