Requiem for the Crescent City?

Many of us have been predicting for months that this would happen without swift action:

The passing of our most distinctive city, so prominent in American imagination and lore, became official Wednesday.

Is it really a requiem for the city we once knew and loved?

The reason the old New Orleans is dead is that the people who made it special are gone and there is no path for them to come back. I doubt there's anywhere else in this country you could find so many black people who look white or so many white people who sound black. I know there's nowhere else you could find all the Creoles and Cajuns, nowhere else you could hear that odd New Orleans accent that sounds more like Brooklyn than Biloxi.