What are we for? - What we’re for

NEW ORLEANS — Atlanta’s deficit of grace is on full display right now in the most wounded of places.

We call ourselves the capital of the South. But you have to look hard to learn that we’re the cultural center of any particular culture or region. Outsiders see us not for our Southerness, but mainly for our commerce — our Fortune 500 companies, our efficiency, our topflight shopping opportunities, our airport, our traffic. We are big. We are ambitious. We are growing.

New Orleans is the opposite. Always poor, its economy is now in shambles. And a good reason for it to exist where it does — in a hurricane-prone bowl between two hostile bodies of water — is hard to fathom.

Yet, as I tap these words in the city’s Uptown district, friends here are reuniting and rallying to rebuild.

They love this city for the unique place it is: They are arguing. They are passing out petitions. They are scheming for reforms of the schools, the levee boards, the police department. They are pushing for the federal government to build levees that actually protect the city.

New Orleans isn’t the capital of the South. But it is the South’s flower — a birthplace of cuisine and music, a blending spot for well-nurtured cultures. It has long been as tattered and familiar and comfortable as the best pair of boots you ever had; that is part of having character.

Atlanta will never be that flower. But maybe we can learn something from New Orleans. All due praise to shiny new developments. But the biggest step Atlanta’s taken in recent years has been toward nurturing more small venues — restaurants, coffee shops, music venues and tiny urban villages — where we can accumulate our own shared and unique experiences, where we can build our own sense of place.