The last couple of hundred miles before reaching New Orleans have always filled me with nervous energy. On long, youthful drives there, I used to get a special jolt somewhere around Mobile, Alabama – only two more hours, I would think, and I’ll be feasting on pink crawfish tails, Gulf Coast oysters and Louisiana boudin, all washed down with cold Dixie beer. But I felt a different sensation as my aircraft prepared to land on a clear, humid morning this spring. I had not been to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, and I was worried that I wasn’t prepared to see the city in shambles. I am a native southerner, and, like many southerners, I consider New Orleans to be our Paris – for its romantic, haunted architecture, for its jazz and for its different rhythm of life. I was ready for ruined houses, but I was not sure I could handle New Orleans if its spirit seemed broken.

Two years on

Audio slideshow: Housing battles continue in New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina

I was greeted by signs of storm damage – I saw a piece of twisted roofing still lodged in a treetop – but also resilience. Broadmoor, a low-lying neighbourhood that some planners thought was not worth rebuilding, was alive with workers. Spirited residents displayed placards reading “Broadmoor Lives!” in their yards and on signposts, showing a determination to rebuild no matter what the men with the flood maps said.