re: shreveport vs. lafayette business climate

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Bossier City and Shreveport are the metro area. They are divided only by a bridge over the Red River. However, because they are different parishes, unlike Alexandria and Pineville they have different tax rates and governing bodies.
Shreveport is black and liberal.
Bossier is white and conservative.

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Shreveport is much larger and the center for most of the larger businesses in the metro area. This includes large attorney firms, banks, financial companies, oil and gas companies, etc. While both have their drawbacks to doing business, Bossier has a bad reputation for being a "good old boys network." Shreveport suffers from some of the same ills as well. Bossier may have a higher average school system but the top schools in the area would undoubtably be located in Shreveport. More people than one would think from Bossier send their kids to Loyola. As for colleges I would imagine anyone would see LSUS and Centenary as being better options than BPCC.

As to the original topic, Lafayette always has seemed more progressive. Shreveport suffers from the Baptist belt influences. With a population in Shreveport much larger than Lafayette there seem to be more large scale grocers and developments in Lafayette. Lafayette definitely appears to rely on the oil business as a bigger percentage of revenue than Shreveport which was forced to diversify more after the bust due to declining reserves.