Rebuilding of New Orleans - raise it up

The Chicago River was reversed many years ago. Part of Chicago exists on fill that was built to extend out the shoreline along lake Michigan. Part of the city was raised one story (with jacks and such) to compensate for the swampy land. Perhaps New Orleans can be raised up. The technology exists to vastly change a city's layout and depth.

Existing buildings can be raised up above sea level and the void beneath can be filled in. The rest of the area can be filled and the boundaries (where the levies now are) can be reinforced. This could have several benefits over restoring the pre-storm set-up:

1. cataclysmic flooding would be next to impossible
2. the reinforced periphery would only need maintenance every 100 years or so (like Chicago's shoreline).
3. if the city of New Orleans in the future were to fail to maintain it, there would be no catastrophic failure; the edges of the city would slowly erode away. This would give time for residents of affected ares to slowly react.

Rebuilding a city in a soup bowl is a foolish recreation of the city-in-jeopardy we had a week ago. Fill the soup bowl and rebuild the city on top.

Thank you

tags: New Orleans, Katrina, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane, civil engineering, Politics