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has the potential to allow those without official political power in a city to control their own small fiefdom without effecting widespread changes to the benefit of all. A case in point is the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. B. The Form-Based Code Process and the Case of Hurricane Katrina On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a massive category fouri i' storm, hit New Orleans, Louisiana and the surrounding Gulf Coast area, causing a level of destruction not experienced in the area in decades. l lg Approximately eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded., with some of the most severe damage occurring in the Lower Ninth Ward, Central City, and the Seventh Ward, all areas heavily populated by African-Americans.119 In the period since Hurricane Katrina, poor black victims have been the slowest to return to New Orleans.120 There are a number of the reasons for inability of poor black Katrina victims to return to New "' Hurricane intensity is measured on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The scale ranges from 1 to 5, with 1 having the least intensity and wind speeds between 74 and 95 miles per hour, and 5 being the most intense with wind speeds greater than or exceeding 156 miles per hour. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 4 storm at 140 miles per hour. For a discussion of the development and use of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, see Judith A. Howard & Ernest Zebrowski, Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane 211-235 (2005). iis prior to Katrina, the last storm to cause significant damage to New Orleans was Hurricane Betsy in 1965. However, it is generally asserted that no storm besides Katrina has wielded such destructive force in the United States since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, also known as the San Felipe hurricane, which killed over 3,000 people in Florida and Puerto Rico, and many hundreds more on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The Okeechobee hurricane caused over 800 million dollars in damage in today's dollars. See generally Eliot Kleinberg, Black Cloud: The Great Florida Storm of 1928 (2003). 119 New Orleans is divided into 17 wards. The Ninth ward, located in the easternmost downriver portion of the city is the largest of these wards and is arguably the most famous ward. '�o William H. Frey & Audrey Singer, Katrina and Rita Impacts on Gulf Coast Populations: First Census Findings, in The Brookings Institution: Cities and Suburbs (last modified 2006, June) (last visited November 28, 2006) <http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060607_hurricanes.htm>. Full report on file with the author. 33