The engineering apologetics juggernaut known as Henry Petroski has turned out another timely reflection on technology and its social relations, with special reference to policy questions involving climate change, energy, and related challenges. But to what extent does the recognition of distinctions between science and engineering really promote effective engineering (or science) for policy?

Flood control is a national religion in the Netherlands. In 49 U.S. states, it’s Louisiana’s problem. —John McQuaid, New Orleans Times-Picayune, 13 November 2005 The whirlwind that swept through the American media after the devastation of New Orleans last August was hardly less ferocious than Hurricane Katrina itself. The Corps of Engineers was lambasted for [...]

Since the destruction in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina last August/September, I have pondered the strained links among cities, technologies, and catastrophes. In this I am probably like millions of other people. The only difference is that a few years ago I wrote a history of New Orleans’s relationship with the Mississippi. So, when Katrina [...]

Prologue: The Wyndham New Orleans Hotel, 19 January 2006, 6:30 p.m. Huge glass windows stretch from the eleventh floor reception area to the twelfth floor, where the ballroom is. It is the sixty-fifth annual meeting of the Association of Levee Boards of Louisiana. The association’s motto: “Without Flood Protection, Nothing Else Matters.” Behind me, the [...]

Land sinks. Water rises. Coastal Louisiana is losing ground to the ocean as fast as any region on Earth-an acre every twenty-five minutes, a slab the size of New Orleans every five or six years.{1} Geologists call it subsidence. Swampers say the salt marsh trembles and floats where the toe of Louisiana points toward Havana, [...]