More than half the population is still scattered across the country. Entire neighborhoods remain abandoned to the mold and misery left behind by floodwaters that swamped 80 percent of the city. And bodies are still being pulled out of the ruins.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina is shocking to behold. The wind and storm surge literally wiped out entire towns across the Gulf Coast on August 29, causing more than 80 billion dollars in property damage.

Reports of the death toll vary, but the National Weather Service estimates that about 1,500 people were killed by Katrina, most of them in New Orleans. Another 135 people continue listed as missing.

While Mississippi got the brunt of the wind damage, New Orleans had most of the deaths after levees failed and 80 percent of the city was flooded with up to six metres (20 feet) of water. It took 43 days for the water to fully drain away.

Fears that the hastily repaired levees will not stand up to another storm have kept large numbers of people away. But the rebuilding effort has also stagnated amid political infighting: the city does not expect to have a reconstruction plan in place before the end of the year.

"The mayor has not taken a leadership role in driving this process - it's basically every man, woman and child for themselves," said Susan Powell, a political science professor and pollster at New Orleans University.

In the French Quarter and Garden district, which escaped the flooding because they were built on higher ground, it's hard to find Katrina's mark. The bars on Bourbon Street are serving up hurricanes, the beignets are fresh at Cafe du Monde and the rich sounds of jazz standards have returned to Preservation Hall.

Outside of the main tourist districts, people who came back to rebuild look out their windows at the wrecked and abandoned homes of neighbors who have not returned. Most are exhausted from the effort of mending their shattered lives and weaving through the endless bureaucracy of government aid offices and insurance companies.

Depression is rampant and the suicide rate remains high. Living in tiny trailers or in spare rooms of friends and relatives has brought an increase in domestic violence. Drug and alcohol abuse are common, and the National Guard had to be called back after a slew of gangland-style slayings.

A sense of social isolation and frustration has helped fuel the area's rising violence, said John Penny, a criminology professor at the predominantly black Southern University at New Orleans.

"The only way you can heal the breach that was already there is to tell people they're welcome home and help them come back," he said. "There's a sense that the government doesn't care about poor people -- war, buying bombs and rebuilding another country is their priority."

Katrina exposed the deep racial and economic divides that still plague the United States more than 40 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society plan to wage war on poverty.

The inability - many say unwillingness - of the government to get help to thousands of people trapped by floods and abandoned for days with no food of water outraged the nation, and a deep sense of betrayal still dominates discussions in New Orleans.

It's hard sometimes to understand why people come back to the scene of such misery and devote their lives to rebuilding homes that have to be gutted to the frame, and to a city with some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the country.

But those who are back say the same thing: there's no place else like New Orleans. "I think we have the potential to be a better city," said Clancy DuBos, editor of the city's alternative newspaper Gambit Weekly.

"Gumbo is still going to taste like gumbo if we have a lower murder rate and good public schools and honest politics," he added. "There's still a lot of opportunity out there but it's not for the faint hearted."

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