In 1980 the New Orleans City Planning Commission divided the city into 13 planning districts and 72 distinct neighborhoods. See Orleans Parish neighborhood map
While most of these assigned boundaries match with traditional local designations, some others differ from common traditional use. This is a result of the City Planning Commission's wish to divide the city into sections for governmental planning and zoning purposes without crossing U.S. Census tract boundaries. While most of the listed names have been in common use by New Orleanians for generations, some designated names are rarely heard outside of the Planning Commission usage.
There are a number of traditional and historic divisions of New Orleans which may still be commonly heard of in conversation, but which do not correspond with City Planning Commission designations.
The 19th-century division of the city along the axis of Canal Street into downtown and uptown is a prime example. Various areas of the modern city which were separate towns in the past, such as Algiers and Carrollton, continue to be spoken of – but now as neighborhoods. The large area to the east of the Industrial Canal and north of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, little developed until the last third of the 20th century, is often referred to as Eastern New Orleans (or "New Orleans East," although that term usually refers to a smaller subset of the area).