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For generations of sightseers, "Brand New Orleans" has meant the fiery-orange metallic sheen sparkling from a string of Mardi Gras beads at 3 a.m. Marketing the city's brand personality is a crash course in Old World charm meets keg party madness. The city's stay-awhile appeal and close-knit community welcomes visitors with the same traditional joviality that has made it an attractive escape for years. While tourism dollars and hype perpetually brand this city as a lively Southern town, the old neighborhoods behind the French Quarter's polished charm paint a different picture of the city -- one in need of education reform, a crack down on crime, industrial diversification, housing revitalization, and redevelopment. Given its rich cultural history, can and should this tourist town embrace the technological demands of the New Economy and down play its Mardi Gras reputation?

[Jim Clinton] As a brand name, New Orleans still leans on its party-city, carnival, polycultural reputation. That's what there is to market, and that's what feeds the tourism. An area of great growth in the next 15 years will be New Orleans' commitment to education and its commitment to diversifying its economy, and building on its existing scientific and technological developments. I would hope that it has a much more solid business brand identity in ten years.

[Harold Doley] If you look at New Orleans from a tourist's perspective -- if you visit the French Quarter, the riverfront, the convention center, Audubon Park, St. Charles Avenue, the streetcar route, the Garden District, and the lakefront area -- this is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But if you go to the old neighborhoods, New Orleans becomes a problem: The crime and the deteriorated housing stock is troubling. The city needs to revitalize the deteriorated housing, which is unattractive and unsafe, which increases the crime rate. The housing area is a major component of growth, with the greatest multiplier effect: When you build, renovate, or restore property, you put many people to work. One dollar could turn over three, four, five times, which is what is needed.

That said, the city needs to look at a serious program for housing revitalization. This is just not good business. It's not good government. These decisions are decisions made for political expedience. New Orleans needs to move beyond tourism as one of the prime economic thrusts because tourism does not require the type of talent that is necessary to service modern industries. New Orleans has to diversify its economy and the skills of its labor force. New Orleans needs to exploit the oil and gas within Orleans Parish. In the days of Huey Long, there were prohibitions in the Louisiana constitution against drilling and producing oil wells in the Orleans Parish. Serving on the Louisiana State Mineral Board, I was made aware of geological structures that possessed tremendous oil and gas potential. One of the largest tracts is owned by the Orleans School Board. And it's just laying fallow. The necessary laws in our constitution need to be changed to allow drilling to occur. Major oil-producing cities like Tulsa, Houston, Los Angeles have rotaries around oil wells. That's something New Orleans can do. Because Louisiana is an oil and gas state, New Orleans has tremendous offshore resources. I'm the former Director of the Minerals Management Service of Interior that leases the outer continental shelf. And the largest royalty income for the U.S. government is right from the Gulf area. Oil prices have recovered significantly in the last year or year and a half, which makes a big difference to the economy.