Over at Centrality, I wrote a post yesterday, exploring the social capital of the Gulf coast:

A recent Washington Post editorial by Joel Garreau on the heartbreaking Katrina disaster, entitled A Sad Truth: Cities Aren't Forever, starts out stating a historial truth -- that cities don't necessarily live forever -- and then winds up suggesting that New Orleans will find it difficult to bounce back from Katrina because of relatively low social capital:

In his 2000 book, "Bowling Alone," political scientist Robert Putnam measured social capital around the country -- the group cohesion that allows people to come together in times of great need to perform seemingly impossible feats together. He found some of the lowest levels in Louisiana. (More Louisianans agree with the statement "I do better than average in a fistfight" than people from almost anywhere else.) His data do not seem to be contradicted by New Orleans's murder rate, which is 10 times the national average.

Garreau sparked my curiousity, so I dug out Bowling Alone, and looked through for the salient mention of Louisiana, and discovered a much darker truth buried there...

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