Eastern New Orleans

Eastern New Orleans is a large section of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Developed extensively from the 1960s onwards, it was originally marketed as "suburban-style living within the city limits", and has much in common with the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. Today, its character remains notably suburban, resembling typical American suburbia much more than the characteristic New Orleans landscape of cast iron and mature live oaks found in the center. Starting in the mid-1980s, New Orleans East increasingly suffered from disinvestment and urban decay. The flooding occurring in Hurricane Katrina's wake, which affected almost all of Eastern New Orleans, accelerated this trend, as numerous national retailers present and operating in August 2005 have opted not to reopen their stores. Approximately 65,000 to 75,000 residents presently inhabit New Orleans East, representing a decline from the 95,000 people inhabiting the area as of the 2000 Census.

Eastern New Orleans is the portion of the city to the east of the Industrial Canal and north of the Intracoastal Waterway. It is often called "New Orleans East" as well, or simply "The East". New Orleans East is a portion of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

The urbanized area immediately east of the Industrial Canal largely dates to the 1960s and 70s, and includes such neighborhoods as Lake Willow, Spring Lake, Kenilworth, Seabrook, Melia, Pines Village, Lake Forest East, Lake Forest West, Edgelake, Plum Orchard, Bonita Park, Donna Villa, Willowbrook, Cerise-Evangeline Oaks and Castle Manor.

Originally named Lake Forest, as development first centered along the easternmost segment of Lake Forest Boulevard, The Read Blvd East area began growing in the 1970s and continues to develop. It includes the more upper-middle class and affluent subdivisions of New Orleans East, such as Lake Forest Estates, Eastover, McKendall Estates, Lake Carmel, Fairway Estates, Lake Bullard, Lake Barrington, and McKendall Place. Eastover is a gated community containing palatial homes and a Joe Lee-designed golf course. By the late 1990s, the neighborhoods of Read Blvd East were no longer majority white, but were particularly favored as the preferred place of residence for New Orleans' upwardly-mobile African-American white collar professional and entrepreneurial classes.

The far eastern portion of Eastern New Orleans has little urban development, although it still lies within the city limits of New Orleans. It includes the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, Chef Menteur Pass, Fort Macomb, historic Fort Pike on the Rigolets, and scattered areas of essentially rural character, like Venetian Isles, Irish Bayou and Lake Saint Catherine.

Village de L'Est is known for its Vietnamese community. The Vietnamese community is also known as Versailles, as the earliest migrants to the area, arriving in the years after 1975, settled first in the Versailles Arms apartment complex. The commercial hub for this community extends along Alcee Fortier Boulevard, within Village de L'Est. Sometimes known as "Little Vietnam", the area is noted even outside the community for the Vietnamese restaurants, perhaps most notably Dong Phuong Restaurant & Bakery.

Eastern New Orleans institutions and landmarks include the Lakefront Airport, Joe Brown Park, the Audubon Louisiana Nature Center, Lincoln Beach, and NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, located within the New Orleans Regional Business Park.

Notably, Eastern New Orleans is the only extensive suburban or suburban-style region of Greater New Orleans where, since the late 1960s, all installed utilities have been buried below ground. Like the downtown New Orleans/French Quarter central core and the Garden City-inspired Lakefront neighborhoods of Lake Vista, Lakeshore, Lake Terrace and Lake Oaks, the East consequently possesses a uniquely uncluttered visual aspect, in contrast to the omnipresent wooden utility poles and spider's web of power lines found along most of the major thoroughfares of suburban Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes.