The city has historically been very vulnerable to flooding, due to its high rainfall, low lying elevation, poor natural drainage, and proximity to multiple bodies of water.

[18][19] New Orleans was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, which flooded more than 80% of the city, killed more than 1,800 people, and displaced thousands of residents, causing a population decline of over 50%.

As a French colony, Louisiana faced struggles with numerous Native American tribes, who were navigating the competing interests of France, Spain, and England, as well as traditional rivals.

[42] By 1731, the Natchez people had been killed, enslaved, or dispersed among other tribes, but the campaign soured relations between France and the territory's Native Americans leading directly into the Chickasaw Wars of the 1730s.

[citation needed] The French colony of Louisiana was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War.

Between 1791 and 1810, thousands of St. Dominican refugees from the Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color (affranchis or gens de couleur libres), arrived in New Orleans; a number brought their slaves with them, many of whom were native Africans or of full-blood descent.

The port handled commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed along the Mississippi River watershed.

Despite its role in the slave trade, New Orleans at the time also had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners.

Throughout New Orleans' history, until the early 20th century when medical and scientific advances ameliorated the situation, the city suffered repeated epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical and infectious diseases.

In April 1862, following the city's occupation by the Union Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler – a respected Massachusetts lawyer serving in that state's militia – was appointed military governor.

The "White League", an insurgent paramilitary group that supported the Democratic Party, was organized in 1874 and operated in the open, violently suppressing the black vote and running off Republican officeholders.

In 1874, in the Battle of Liberty Place, 5,000 members of the White League fought with city police to take over the state offices for the Democratic candidate for governor, holding them for three days.

Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison (1946–1961) and Victor "Vic" Schiro (1961–1970), metropolitan New Orleans' growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities.

Much controversy preceded the 1956 Sugar Bowl at Tulane Stadium, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

[93] Though legal and civil equality were re-established by the end of the 1960s, a large gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city's White and African American communities.

The most ambitious development during this period was a drainage plan devised by engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood, designed to break the surrounding swamp's stranglehold on the city's geographic expansion.

By the 1980s and 1990s, scientists observed that extensive, rapid, and ongoing erosion of the marshlands and swamp surrounding New Orleans, especially that related to the Mississippi River–Gulf Outlet Canal, had the unintended result of leaving the city more vulnerable than before to hurricane-induced catastrophic storm surges.

As the hurricane passed through the Gulf Coast region that day, the city's federal flood protection system failed, resulting in the worst civil engineering disaster in American history at the time.

After the Flood Control Act of 1965, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built floodwalls and man-made levees around a much larger geographic footprint that included previous marshland and swamp.

[111] A 2007 study by Tulane and Xavier University suggested that "51%... of the contiguous urbanized portions of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard parishes lie at or above sea level," with the more densely populated areas generally on higher ground.

Subsidence, or settling of the ground surface, occurs naturally due to the consolidation and oxidation of organic soils (called "marsh" in New Orleans) and local groundwater pumping.

Though New Orleans possesses numerous structures of national architectural significance, it is equally, if not more, revered for its enormous, largely intact (even post-Katrina) historic built environment.

Beginning in 1960, the population decreased due to factors such as the cycles of oil production and tourism,[150][151][additional citation(s) needed] and as suburbanization increased (as with many cities),[152] and jobs migrated to surrounding parishes.

[217] Companies with significant operations or headquarters in New Orleans include: Pan American Life Insurance, Pool Corp, Rolls-Royce, Newpark Resources, AT&T, TurboSquid, iSeatz, IBM, Navtech, Superior Energy Services, Textron Marine & Land Systems, McDermott International, Pellerin Milnor, Lockheed Martin, Imperial Trading, Laitram, Harrah's Entertainment, Stewart Enterprises, Edison Chouest Offshore, Zatarain's, Waldemar S. Nelson & Co., Whitney National Bank, Capital One, Tidewater Marine, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, Parsons Brinckerhoff, MWH Global, CH2M Hill, Energy Partners Ltd, The Receivables Exchange, GE Capital, and Smoothie King.

New Orleans has many visitor attractions, from the world-renowned French Quarter to St. Charles Avenue, (home of Tulane and Loyola universities, the historic Pontchartrain Hotel and many 19th-century mansions) to Magazine Street with its boutique stores and antique shops.

According to the poll, New Orleans was the best U.S. city as a spring break destination and for "wild weekends", stylish boutique hotels, cocktail hours, singles/bar scenes, live music/concerts and bands, antique and vintage shops, cafés/coffee bars, neighborhood restaurants, and people watching.

Films produced in and around the city include Ray, Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief, Glory Road, All the King's Men, Déjà Vu, Last Holiday, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 12 Years a Slave, and Project Power.

Local ingredients, French, Spanish, Italian, African, Native American, Cajun, Chinese, and a hint of Cuban traditions combine to produce a truly unique and easily recognizable New Orleans flavor.

New Orleans is known for specialties including beignets (locally pronounced like "ben-yays"), square-shaped fried dough that could be called "French doughnuts" (served with café au lait made with a blend of coffee and chicory rather than only coffee); and po' boy[231] and Italian muffuletta sandwiches; Gulf oysters on the half-shell, fried oysters, boiled crawfish and other seafood; étouffée, jambalaya, gumbo and other Creole dishes; and the Monday favorite of red beans and rice (Louis Armstrong often signed his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours").

Specifically, many members of European immigrant families originally raised in the cities of the Northeast, namely New York, moved to New Orleans during this time frame, bringing their Northeastern accents along with their Irish, Italian (especially Sicilian), German, and Jewish culture.