Big Red: New Orleans may be a bowl but it is a bowl with lumps and bumps in the bottom. The CBD (what they call the Central Business District locally) is next to the French Quarter which is about the highest land around--a bump. If you think about it, that makes sense: the original settlers would have picked the highest ground on which to establish their settlement. They didn't have pumps and levees at first. I think over 300 years, the whole area has subsided somewhat and it is now all below sea level, but the French Quarter/CBD are still the highest land in town.