New Orleans Thursday shows itself off to President Barack Obama and Cabinet members traveling to the Gulf Coast port still repairing Hurricane Katrina's wrath.

Obama was to conduct a town hall at the University of New Orleans to learn from the residents what's working and what concerns them, the White House said.

Obama was making his first post-inauguration visit to a city and region where officials say they want to point up the strides made since Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the remaining challenges in housing, education, healthcare, levee protection and coastal restoration yet ahead, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

Before his town hall, Obama will visit student at the Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward.

Joining the president to New Orleans will be Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Nancy Sutley, who leads the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The officials will join Obama at the town hall, as well as conduct separate events, the newspaper said. Several members of Louisiana's delegation to Washington will accompany Obama.