Survey: Crime is residents' No. 1 priority

Preventing crime, providing street lighting, creating good schools and making neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly are among the priorities of New Orleans residents asked to help craft Hurricane Katrina recovery plans, a Tulane University survey shows.

The survey of 1,073 returned and still-displaced residents -- using phone, Internet and in-person interviews -- offers compelling evidence that New Orleanians want crime-fighting measures incorporated into neighborhood designs, said Tom Farley, director of the Prevention Research Center at Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

from the Times Picayune