Bourbon Street may have been the stuff of New Orleans lore, a symbol of the city’s quirky decadence, a neon-lit mecca of shellfish, booze, and parties. But for the Big Easy’s poor, the city’s streets—far from Bourbon’s bar scene—bore a more gritty reality.

As the wasted Gulf Coast looks to rebuild, scholars far from the rubble speculate that New Orleans—with a past marked by entrenched poverty, racial segregation, and a local government sometimes better known for corruption than progress—faces an uncertain future.

Despite fear that the city’s poor will not have the support or resources to reclaim their lives, some at Harvard see the hurricane’s destruction as an opportunity to start with a blank slate.

The faces of despair beamed daily on evening newscasts since Hurricane Katrina first barreled through the Gulf Coast two weeks ago left a sour impression on Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Associate Professor of Public Policy Guy N. Stuart, who was struck by the ubiquitous images of black evacuees in the chaos.

Over two-thirds of New Orleans’ population was black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with a third of the general population living under the poverty line.

While a final body count may not be available for months—if ever—experts predict that Katrina’s greatest human and economic toll will be on members of the lower-income black community.

Stuart suggests a rebuilt New Orleans can put aside a racially divided past by physically constructing a desegregated society.

“The images on television are a product of a combination of racial segregation and the concentration of poverty in the African American community,” says Stuart, a scholar of public policy. “Given that there is an opportunity, we should create a more integrated city and a city of more opportunity for people of all races and income.”

He says he remains doubtful, though, as to whether the media coverage has portrayed accurately the racial aspect of Katrina’s impact.

“We don’t quite know what happened to the white population of St. Bernard County—or parish—which is under about 20 feet of water and which is predominantly white,” Stuart says.

Even for those directly hit, the hurricane may present an opportunity for positive change.

A stoic Monique M. Jordan, 27, meandered through Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport last Thursday, seeking a way out of homelessness. Far from her flooded home located in the lower Ninth Ward—one of the poorest and hardest hit areas of New Orleans—she thinks the irony of Katrina is that it will provide a route out of poverty for the downtrodden.

“This is going to be a turn-around for a lot of people. A lot of people could not get out,” Jordan says. “It’s sad that tragedy had to be a new beginning for some people. Some people never been out of the projects.”

And some may never return at all. Eric Belsky, a lecturer in urban planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, imagines a chasm between the rich and the poor in a post-Katrina New Orleans, with those lacking insurance unable to recreate their former way of life.

“It will involve a lot of insurance claims and remodeling as opposed to rebuilding,” Belsky says. “Surely some places that were uninsured will never be rebuilt or it will be rebuilt as something different. The philanthropy would have to be enormous to really provide for all the people who want their homes.”