How to save a town

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How do you save a dying Louisiana town?

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Kill it, kick out all the problem aspects, and start over from scratch.

That or nuke it from orbit

Release a virus to cut down on population and line your pocket with kick backs from enforcing vaccination and boosters.

Burn it down.

Jobs. They must have jobs. Helps to be within 30 miles of a good size city. Scott and Youngsville are doing well because they are close enough to Lafayette for example. The further in the boonies, the harder it would be. People will only travel so far from their job to home.

Towns further from highways and cities are doomed unless a major employer moves in. Nobody wants to live in Ville Platte and work in Lafayette. There are no jobs nearby to support growth. Property values plummet and then they start moving in. Crime goes up. Then it’s over.

Depends on the town. A lot of rural towns boomed due to a railroad, mine, local factory, etc. That can’t be saved without massive regulatory and trade policy overhaul that brings back domestic manufacturing and mining. Even a lot of former medium sized river port towns don’t see the action they used to because of improved highway systems and central hubs being more efficient to ship to a major city and truck it from there down the interstate.

Rural America used to be way less accessible via highways so shipping to a rural town via rail or river was more efficient and this allowed local factories there to receive raw materials in bulk. Rural America won’t ever fully die due to agriculture but the days of industry being built in those towns so they’ll thrive isn’t coming back. It’s more efficient to be located near a city for manufacturing and shipping outwards from a central hub

I tried to do the opposite - save a town from rampant development with no appreciation for anything except growth for its own sake. I failed. So, I go searching for more windmills.

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Hornbeck is incentivizing people who work from home to move there. They’re giving up to 50k if you move from out of state. Thousands of people are moving there from New York and California.

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I dont think the whole town of Hornbeck is worth $50K

Is the population still under 500?

Bringing new business in helps but it doesn’t solve everything. People will just commute from outside town if structural issues in the city are not resolved.

Has to be organic and deliberate efforts to improve and make the place attractive. The locals have to want it and they have to sweat the small stuff.

It starts with simple things like cleaning up the litter, calling the cops when people break the law, patching potholes, and reporting broken street lights to Entergy for repair. Then it moves on to applying for state or federal grants to redevelop sidewalks or refurbish historic buildings. Then it gets to a new restaurant or coffee shop. Then maybe some new residents come in or a festival of some kind.

Step One: Get rid of the good-ole boy network in local office.

Step Two: don't elect anybody who's lived there more than a decade to take their spot.

Step Three: ???

Step Four: Profit.