I've not been to New Orleans, but based on a quick Google Street View exploration, I find its core extremely impressive in terms of the quality of its urban fabric and its geographic expanse--especially for a metro of its size (1.2 million). Charleston and Savannah don't belong in the same sentence, and neither does Miami/Miami Beach.
The French Quarter and CBD together cover 1.5 square miles. As a comparison, Chicago's Loop spans about 1.6 square miles (but like 40% of it is park space), while Boston's core (CBD, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, West End, North End) is also roughly the same size. Although this geographic area has a tiny residential population and there are spotty parts, it has fantastic bones throughout.
I personally find NO's core more impressive than that of other cities (i.e. Baltimore, Pittsburgh) that tend to get more love in the urban category simply because of Rust Belt legacies.
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βTo tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance.β
β Jerome Bruner
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