how feasable would it be to "fill in" the city and rebuild it up

[notadmblnd]

over sea level? Since most everything is destroyed, couldn't it be bulldozed and filled up past sea level to rebuild?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. the problem with that would be

that the fill may not be stable, and that the same problem of sinking would occur again.

[Cassius23]

2. I don't think it would be very do-able..

as the last time it was tried was with Mexico City.

The problem is that unless you fill in the whole thing with sheer concrete that will mean that you will have very spongy soil mixed with water, a much more subtle version of building your house on sand. If you go to Mexico City you can see the evidence of how the buildings are shifting because of the unstable soil that the city was built on(it was built on a filled up lake after Cortez took it over).

I'd bet my bottom dollar the exact same thing would happen for the exact same reasons in New Orleans(the soil would be kept spongy by the lake.

[Inland]

3. Wouldn't it depend what you were rebuilding on the fill?

In my alternative of a New Orleans much reduced to a covention and tourist area, without much industrial infrastructure, I would suspect most of the fill would be covered with either parkland or smaller structures. The fill would be able to support that.

So hypothetically the city could be bulldozed, oil tanks removed, and covered with dirt.

[benEzra]

4. That's what they did with much of Galveston, Texas

after the 1905? hurricane that killed 5000+ people. Historical structures that were still standing were simply jacked up and the foundations raised, and destroyed areas of the city were filled in and new construction built on the newer, much higher, ground. Seems to have worked pretty well.