Another house in the Lakeview district of New Orleans.

Photo: Robin Pogrebin/The New York Times

Robin Pogrebin writes, "There is what could be called the Defensive style, houses jacked up so high on pilings that they look as if they might teeter over or take wing. There is also the Defiant style: pristine houses with columned porches painted in storybook pastels. These are surrounded by houses with boarded-up windows and padlocked doors; FEMA trailers still in the front yard; arrested construction because of a shortage of contractors; or empty lots with nothing left but corroding concrete foundations."

Photo: Lee Celano - The New York Times

Rising Up in New Orleans, the Post-Storm House .
Ronald Lewis' House of Dance and Feathers in the Lower Ninth Ward.

The result of all of this construction is precisely the hasty, haphazard aesthetic that some planners warned would emerge unless officials seized on Katrina as an opportunity to rethink the Crescent City in a more systematic fashion. But to many people who live here, some construction is better than none, whatever form it takes. Although about a quarter of the population has yet to return, at least some people are coming home.

6721 Louisville in the Lakeview area of New Orleans. Photo: Lee Celano

“With the ad hoc repair to the city, New Orleans is missing a golden opportunity,” Mr. Eskew said. “If your city has been destroyed, you’ve got a chance to make things right, not just to replace what was there. There is a tremendous amount of money being spent fixing things. The question is, is the fix of old paradigms the right way to get a community back in shape?”

George Mayer stands on the porch of his new modular house on Vicksburg in the Lakeview area.  Photo: Lee Celano

Among the ideas advanced by architects and urban planners is permitting New Orleans to come back as a smaller city, with some heavily flooded areas left undeveloped; commissioning innovative 21st-century architecture for new public and residential buildings, even as the city’s treasured historic structures are preserved; and rebuilding low-income housing on higher ground.