Blight has actually gone down. Mid City is a much much nicer place with developments like Bon Carre' and everything along Government Street. Also, the abandoned buildings near the Swaggart Complex have been renovated into offices and a hotel. Gardere is far safer than it was in the early 2000s.

Downtown has been completely turned around in the best way possible. Apartments and lofts are going up like crazy as are hotels. New restaurants are opening left and right. There's a grocery store down there now. The town square has been a resounding success with all of its concerts and festivals. IBM has its offices downtown. There's the greenway. By every measure, downtown is like night and day better than it was pre-Katrina.

Perkins Rowe is a post Katrina development. While it has never lived up to expectations, it is a huge development that simply didn't exist prior to Katrina.

Citiplace now has a better theatre with the movie tavern and has Brown & Root located there.

The bar scene is better, even though we did lose Chelsea's, Northgate Tavern, and the Caterie. We gained the downtown bars, the renovated Ivar's and Duvic's, the Merchant, Radio Bar, The Cove, CB&D, etc.

Restaurant scene is much better now that we have places like City Pork, Curbside, Beausoleil, Sushi Masa, and many many many more.

The libraries are better. The Parks are better.

Where Baton Rouge has declined most has been in crime. While the 90's were the most dangerous time in the city, crime was on a massive downward trend in the early 2000's. Katrina caused a huge spike in crime which eventually tapered off to an extent, but never fell below its pre-Katrina levels.

Several neighborhoods have declined since Katrina:
Tigerland
Starring
Shenandoah
Broadmoor
Sherwood Forest

While Broadmoor and Sherwood were already trending in the wrong direction prior to Katrina, the decline of the other neighborhoods was a little more surprising. The decline in Starring was made most poignant when a local politician's son was killed during a drug deal in that area.

Tigerland had always been trashy and loud due to college students, but turned dangerous after Katrina with armed robberies, shootings, and an ax attack. This has mostly been caused by a single complex of Section 8 housing back there paired with new housing units opening up around campus.

Shenandoah has started to decline in places due to the St. Jean Apartments going section 8 and bringing in all kinds of trash. Shenandoah also has the taxes and poor schools of the rest of EBR while being less convenient to get to work downtown than Mid City, Southdowns, or the Garden District. The houses also aren't as new as the developments along Highland and such.

As stated, BR has improved majorly since Katrina...at least it was improving up until last summer. Since then, it has seen some serious stress from police shootings, protests, a bad economy, a tax and spend governor, a new race-baiting mayor, and an unprecedented flood that devastated many neighborhoods, especially in the suburbs.

This leaves BR at a major turning point. Either it is going to continue to push forward and improve itself or it is going to go the way of Jackson, MS and decline down the rabbit hole. BR at least has 2 things going for it at this point as checks against decline:

1. The jobs that are here aren't going anywhere. The plants aren't going to pick up and leave any time soon, nor will the port or state government. While the plants may hire fewer contractors, the state may lay some people off, etc the core jobs will still exist.

2. The suburbs were absolutely ravaged by the flood far worse than the core of the city. AP, LP, Central, & Zachary were practically washed away. Even before the flood, they were starting to seriously fill up with people greatly overburdening their infrastructure. Basically, the suburbs can't really accomidate that many more people. Without having competent suburbs to flee to, it would be difficult for those who would flee the city in the event of a white exodus to find a place in the metro area to live. The flood is really going to slow development, or even potentially stunt it due to new building requirements, for years.

So, basically, BR is a much better place since Katrina, but it is absolutely at a crucial junction post flood.