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In October 2005, fifty-eight days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans, the Forum for Urban Design hosted a forum about the future of the Big Easy. Five years later, the Forum was joined once again by Kristina Ford, former Planning Director for the City of New Orleans, to discuss her recent book, The Trouble with City Planning.

Kristina Ford, who worked as the city’s chief planner for eight years, began the evening by reflecting upon the “deluge of plans” that followed in Katrina’s aftermath. Alan Plattus, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Yale University, and John Landis, Professor of Urban Planning at PennDesign, joined the conversation to debate the plausibility of “the good city plan”: the short, accessible, and jargon-free plan that Ford touts as the solution to the “planning fatigue” that has deeply affected New Orleanians in the last five years.