Five years after hurricane Katrina, the City of New Orleans is now implementing a far-reaching plan for the systemic renovation and rebuilding of community programmes and infrastructure. A total of USD 3 billion has now been allocated to public building projects. With the student population down to nearly half of pre-storm totals, a recently completed school facilities master plan will finance the rebuilding of some 85 schools. At a minimum, each of these school sites will become a community school, with gymnasiums, auditoriums and school libraries open to the community at nights and on weekends. Furthermore, many of the school sites will also become community "nexus" centres where parks, community gardens, parenting centres, healthy grocery stores, farmer's markets and other community-centred programmes and facilities will be co-located. The new plan will also be more environmentally and socially sustainable. A nexus site will be located within a short walking distance of all housing areas in the city. Since 29% of New Orleans residents do not have access to private transportation, this means that owning an automobile will no longer be a pre-requisite for equitable access to a nexus of educational and community services. And even for those citizens fortunate enough to have private transport, this approach provides for more walkable, healthy and environmentally sustainable neighbourhood development. More than 10 000 citizens were engaged in developing the plan for rebuilding New Orleans. To help sustain the process, an evolving partnership between the Louisiana Public Health Institute, the Neighborhoods Partnership Network (NPN) and Concordia LLC was formed. It is working with city and school officials, social service providers and neighbourhood groups to define nexus implementation guidelines, explore governance options and create a dashboard of community indicators through which the new centres will operate.