NEW ORLEANS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Fifteen months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his city, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said on Monday he has hired a disaster recovery expert amid widespread criticism that rebuilding has been too slow.

Edward Blakely, who worked in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and in northern California after the 1989 earthquake and 1991 wildfires, will head Nagin's newly created Mayor's Office of Recovery Management.

Blakely is currently chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Sydney in Australia. He has visited New Orleans several times since the deadly storm on Aug. 29, 2005. More than 80 percent of the city was flooded after water broke through the levees.

Rebuilding and return of the population have been much slower than predicted.

A Louisiana state survey released last week put New Orleans' population at 41 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina size of 484,000.

The main problem for returnees is lack of housing. Most affected neighborhoods are still gutting with properties rendered useless by flooding. Some 120,000 homeowners in Louisiana are awaiting state aid to rebuild and repair homes.

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