Re: the NOLA bashing.... There are a few good things happening slowly.

Cities everywhere are weighed down by poverty, dwindling tax bases, loss of jobs. Inner cities are in decay. Affluent (white) people move out, and when the decay starts to reach them, they move further out. The lucky cities are the ones that are able to reinvigorate and gentrify the decayed, abandoned parts, which works its way out from the middle just like the decay did years earlier. Cities won't revive until people of means start moving back IN.

This is where New Orleans has actually done better than many other places. There is a historic housing stock that people are spending lots of good money to renovate. People on the outside like to complain about how shitty New Orleans is, and the crime and the bad schools and the culcha. But at least people have been slowly moving back in as opposed to simply leaving. True, a lot of the people moving in are childless out-of-towners or hipsters. But God bless those folks. They are pioneers, willing to take on the financial and safety risks before it becomes hot and trendy for everybody else.

Stage 1 of gentrification is that you must have the pioneers. Businesses and amenities of life follow people, not vice versa. Want to get rid of the criminals? Start buying up their neighborhoods.