Crow, I think if you check you'll find that places like the French Quarter are just on higher ground, which is probably true of a lot of the more expensive real estate.
As to the levees breaking, what's breaking are actually walls which aren't nearly as wide as the levees, I believe they were built around 1960's. I believe more of these walls could collapse as they lower the water level in the city because the presents of water on both sides of the wall is softening its support. This morning another part of the wall caved in.
I believe before New Orleans is rebuilt the walls and perhaps the levees will have to be reengineered completely. Certainly the higher areas of the city, like the French Quarter, may be able to be reopened, but much of the city needs to be reengineered before they rebuild it.
As bad as New Orleans was hit, most coastal communities that got hit by the hurricane were turned into toothpicks. Those communities won't be reengineered to prevent a reoccurence, they almost can't be. People like to live on the coast of areas that are hit with hurricanes, barring major changes in how such homes must be constructed, they will rebuild with structures that are as vunerable as the structures that were destroyed.
We in California live in buildings that generally withstand earthquakes reasonably well, but if it's the "Big One" and you're near the epicenter, you will probably at least sustain some damage if you aren't completely destroyed. You could try not to live near a major fault, but many of the worst recent quakes occurred on previously undiscovered faults. There is no doubt that there will be major quakes on the San Andres fault at some point, the problem is geological time is usually thought of in periods of thousands of years or more. Sure a quake could come tomorrow, but it might not come for 10,000 years, that's very little time geologically. Remember the earth is something like 4.5 billion years old.
New Orleans may not be hit with another Force 4 or greater hurricane for hundreds or thousands of years, then again it could happen next week, month or year. Geologically it's almost the same time.
Gary
