In between running farmers markets, looking for a place to live after Mardi Gras day and keeping up with far-flung (and I do mean flung) friends and family, I am working on a new thing for New Orleans: our first green map.

Green maps are snapshots of sustainability in a city. They focus on those positive things that bring creative culturals to an area to buy an old shattered house, adopt a local dive and call themselves locals after a time. Green spaces, bike lanes and cultural authenticity can make or break an area when it comes to keeping these mavens in your town. Green maps can be used (and are) in many different ways, from presenting a rosy picture of today to seeing the holes to fill tomorrow. The organization Green Map System is set up to help interested city activists with the dos and don'ts and technical assistance to make their own maps. Wendy Brawer, the head of Green Map, produced the first one, back in 1992, for New York City. And true to her belief that "sustainable" means "local," she uses her success to help others map their city.

As you can imagine, my pre-Katrina green map ideas are very different from 2006 ideas. Pre-Katrina, we had fruit trees in neighborhoods, community gardens and burgeoning art and architecture scenes. Overflowing with new energy and ideas, we could hardly decide what to concentrate on back then. In the brown dust of a largely abandoned city, the needs are much clearer. We will follow my work and make a food system map, documenting where markets sell local food, where grocery stores that sustain a neighborhood are located, maybe even where the po' boy was invented!

We will create a map that allows locals and visitors alike to walk the path of our city and know the richness of what we have lost and are trying to regain. We can also create a map that works in the short term: hand-drawn maps for each neighborhood that will be posted to show where emergency kitchens give out food, what stores have reopened, where one can stop and pick a piece of fruit from a public neutral area.

So much good can be mapped out this year for New Orleans. I hope that this is the first step.