re: New Orleans could actually be a nice city

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New Orleans has been in steady decline since 1960s. It has roughly the same population today as it did in 1920.

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New Orleans: I Have Seen the Future, and It's Houston

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For the past century or so, New Orleans has been a city that has gotten by on charm alone. Very few people here seriously consider New Orleans part of the "New South" or of the "Sunbelt" or of any other geoeconomic entity conjured up in the past two decades. And, until a few years ago, hardly anyone in New Orleans minded being left out. New Orleans might be poor, but it is happy. In fact, during last year's mayoral race, one of the candidates ran TV commercials that showed a bustling skyline with a voiceover ominously intoning, "Do you want New Orleans to become another Houston?"

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Despite the fact that New Orleans has perhaps the finest natural location in the country for commerce, the city's economy has stagnated for at least twenty years. Population has declined; unemployment is among the highest in the South; and New Orleanians have remained among the poorest in the nation. Little has changed since the **** Census, which showed that out of the fifty largest cities in the country, New Orleans had the highest percentage of families living below the federal poverty level: 21.6 percent, against 18.4 percent for second-place Newark. New Orleans also ranked last among the fifty cities in percentage increase in median family income between **** and ****, and forty-third in median years of education per adult.

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Compared to the charm of the city's neighborhoods, New Orleans suburbs tend to be pretty desolate places. The largest, Metairie, consists mainly of a sea of tract houses built in the sixties and of singles' apartments. Across the river, Gretna is much of the same. Metairie and Gretna are both parts of the great suburban parish of Jefferson, which will probably surpass Orleans Parish (New Orleans itself) in population in another fifteen years. Currently the population of Jefferson is around 420,000, of Orleans, 560,000.

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It is almost impossible to talk about the economy of New Orleans without talking about the people who are supposed to "run" the city—its gentry, its social elite. New Orleans is perhaps the only large city left in America where birth counts for so much. And it is hard to say just why—unless the answer lies in Mardi Gras, which is a highly structured social ritual rather than a pubic spectacle like the Rose Bowl Parade.

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